Johnny Football upstaged by LeBron Basketball

No sooner had people started to raise eyebrows about supernova Johnny Football's (a.k.a.Manziel} off-the-field revelries than along came LeBron Basketball (a.k.a. James) to upstage him in the media.   Unless you have been  engaged in a life-and-death personal emergency the past few days, you will know  that LeBron has decided to end his ties with the Miami Heat to pursue his claim as the NBA's greatest player for wherever it will take him - physically and financially..

For the moment at least,  the sports crowd, particularly in northern Ohio, may find less distracting  Johnny Football's' repeated weekend escapades that have shown him riding an inflated swan or swigging champagne from bottle to lips. As we've learned from our livelihood  in LeBron's hometown of Akron, there isn't much on the planet that will distract  the media from reporting his minute- by-minute existence.

Ever since he ceremoniously left the Cavaliers four years ago to take up with the Heat, LeBron has been the source of wistful yearning among the Cavs fans (even those who may have scorned him for leaving) that he would make a MacArthur-like return to bring an elusive championship to a Cleveland sports franchise.

Until  LeBron's  next move is determined, the scribes and broadcast commentators  will drench themselves in  speculation that could encourage the Plain Dealer to spread Terry Pluto over six full pages in a Sunday edition, building on the four that  his voluminous sports profundity was given recently.  (If you're looking for an excessive  first in urban journalism, you need look no farther.)

As for Johnny Football, he may have to ask what a guy has to do to match LeBron's celebrity.    For starters, he  might play his first minute in an actual NFL game.

Macy's ad: Congratulations to whom?

FROM A READER comes this Macy's ad that appeared - prematurely, to say the least - in the Miami Herald . It could easily qualify as the successor to the Chicago Tribune's famous headline of Nov. 3, 1948: DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN.

Everyone involved in the Macy/Herald snafu was naturally red-faced about the preprinted notice that had Macy's out front on what was intended to be a marketing bonanza until the Dallas Mavericks intruded with a victory.

Whatever happened to the old newspaper warning about hasty conclusions: Get it first, but get it right!

Cleveland can enjoy another's pain

IT'S POSSIBLE that Dirk Nowitzki, the talented German power forward of the Dallas Mavericks, was the only player on the floor Sunday night who understood the word schadenfreude, which describes one's joy in another's pain. But as a modest and courteous athlete, Kirk would leave it to much of the basketball world to express in the wake of his team's surprising victory over the Miami Heat to claim the NBA championship. The final score simply focussed on the boorish behavior of LeBron James ever since he announced his departure from Cleveland in an outrageous one-hour TV spectacle in which he appeared as The King.

From there, it became a truism among the analysts that the Heat had just bought itself a slam-dunk championship with the addition of LeBron James and Chris Bosh. And in a incredibly tasteless self-congratulatory event - even for professional sports - it beatified LeBron, Bosh and Dwyane Wade on center stage. Wade assured the cheering audience that this collection of talent was "arguably the best trio to ever play the game of basketball."

It would be easy, said King LeBron, who added that they would not win one championship, but six.. seven...eight . You had to wonder why they would bother to play out the season. Well, even for royalty, those are the rules. And along came the aging Mavericks to challenge the gang that couldn't shoot straight. For guys like Nowtizki and Jason Kidd who had hung around for years trying to win their first championship ring, they simply went about their business in the playoffs and left the bragging to others.

The Heat had Lebron, who faltered, when they desperately needed Michael Jordan to close the deal. All that remains of the Heat season is the tattered promise to "wait 'til next year".