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Hockeytown0001

Dan Gilbert's message to fans regarding LeBron James

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Dear Cleveland, all of Northeast Ohio and Cleveland Cavaliers supporters wherever you may be tonight;

As you now know, our former hero, who grew up in the very region that he deserted this evening, is no longer a Cleveland Cavalier.

This was announced with a several-day, narcissistic, self-promotional build-up culminating with a national TV special of his "decision" unlike anything ever "witnessed" in the history of sports and probably the history of entertainment.

Clearly, this is bitterly disappointing to all of us.The good news is that the ownership team and the rest of the hard-working, loyal, and driven staff over here at your hometown Cavaliers have not betrayed you nor NEVER will betray you.

There is so much more to tell you about the events of the recent past and our more than exciting future. Over the next several days and weeks, we will be communicating much of that to you.

You simply don't deserve this kind of cowardly betrayal.

You have given so much and deserve so much more.

In the meantime, I want to make one statement to you tonight: "I personally guarantee that the Cleveland Cavaliers will win an NBA Championship before the self-titled former 'king' wins one."

You can take it to the bank.

If you thought we were motivated before tonight to bring the hardware to Cleveland, I can tell you that this shameful display of selfishness and betrayal by

one of our very own has shifted our "motivation" to previously unknown and previously never experienced levels.

Some people think they should go to heaven but NOT have to die to get there.

Sorry, but that's simply not how it works.

This shocking act of disloyalty from our homegrown "chosen one" sends the exact opposite lesson of what we would want our children to learn. And "who" we would want them to grow up to become.

But the good news is that this heartless and callous action can only serve as the antidote to the so-called "curse" on Cleveland, Ohio. The self-declared former "King" will be taking the "curse" with him down south. And until he does "right" by Cleveland and Ohio, James (and the town where he plays) will unfortunately own this dreaded spell and bad karma.

Just watch.

Sleep well, Cleveland. Tomorrow is a new and much brighter day...

I PROMISE you that our energy, focus, capital, knowledge and experience will be directed at one thing and one thing only: DELIVERING YOU the championship you have long deserved and is long overdue...

Dan Gilbert

Majority Owner

Cleveland Cavalier

I've never liked the Cavs or Dan Gilbert, but I like him a little bit after this.

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I've never liked the Cavs or Dan Gilbert, but I like him a little bit after this.

I'm visiting family in Cleveland right now and you wouldn't believe the fans here.When LeBron announced he was going to Miami,people were tearing his jerseys,snapping the head off of his bobbleheads,lighting his Nike shoes on fire,it was unbelievable.Good to see Gilbert stick up for the team and the city :thumbup:

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Even though he wrote this out of emotion, I thought it was well done for the context for what LeBron just did to them last night. Who holds a TV special on his free agency decision? And then picks Miami after already letting them know he wanted to go with them, and not even call Gilbert or anyone else over in Cleveland to say sorry but I'm going to move elsewhere. I was listening to The Big One (like The Ticket over here) and everybody loves Gilbert after that, just for the emotion alone that he felt betrayed and wants to work even harder now to win a championship without LeBrand. Last night just made me sick to my stomach to watch a self-centered idiot use kids/charity to promote his name all the while stabbing everyone in Cleveland in the heart.

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Just wait till Cleveland tries to sign some free agents. Who wants to play somewhere where the owner will throw you under the bus? "If I have a bad game, is the owner going to tell everyone I quit?"

I understand the emotions involved, but put it in some perspective. He plays basketball. That's it. He's not curing cancer, or ending poverty.

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The way Cleveland fans are reacting is beyond disgraceful. If it wasn't for Lebron, no one would even know Cleveland has a basketball team. They were perennial losers for a long long time before they drafted Lebron. And their biggest stars before Lebron was Mark f-ing Price and Shawn Kemp. And Kemp didn't even play for them in his prime. Then along comes Lebron and takes that joke of a franchise out of the basement and into a perennial contender. Those fans should be grateful for the 7 long years Lebron spent there and what he did for their city. But no, they're ungrateful sore losers that just show they have zero class. If Gilbert really thinks Lebron is a disgrace and that he "quit" in 2 different playoff runs, then why the HELL was Gilbert trying to re-sign him to a max deal??? A max deal that would have payed Lebron over 15 million more than any other team that wanted him. This is an obvious case of being all pissed off and mad because Lebron chose greener pastures. Gilbert reminds me of a guy that just got dumped by his gf. It's pathetic behavior from cavs fans and even more pathetic behavior from Gilbert. Can't wait to see Lebron, D-Wade and Bosh light the cavs up this season! Take that classless cavs fans!

Edited by TheDetroitRedWings

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: "I personally guarantee that the Cleveland Cavaliers will win an NBA Championship before the self-titled former 'king' wins one."

Ok buddy. Bosh, Wade and LeBron can win a championship by accident.

About the rest of it: Way too douchy and disrespectful. I don't really care what fans in New York or New Jersey think but for the Cleveland fans this must have been gutting. At the same time, if you didn't see this coming then you are blind. He's always said he wants to win championships - because that is how you become counted among the truly great - and Miami gives him the best chance. Maybe Chicago but :S.

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The way Cleveland fans are reacting is beyond disgraceful. If it wasn't for Lebron, no one would even know Cleveland has a basketball team. They were perennial losers for a long long time before they drafted Lebron. And their biggest stars before Lebron was Mark f-ing Price and Shawn Kemp. And Kemp didn't even play for them in his prime. Then along comes Lebron and takes that joke of a franchise out of the basement and into a perennial contender. Those fans should be grateful for the 7 long years Lebron spent there and what he did for their city. But no, they're ungrateful sore losers that just show they have zero class. If Gilbert really thinks Lebron is a disgrace and that he "quit" in 2 different playoff runs, then why the HELL was Gilbert trying to re-sign him to a max deal??? A max deal that would have payed Lebron over 15 million more than any other team that wanted him. This is an obvious case of being all pissed off and mad because Lebron chose greener pastures. Gilbert reminds me of a guy that just got dumped by his gf. It's pathetic behavior from cavs fans and even more pathetic behavior from Gilbert. Can't wait to see Lebron, D-Wade and Bosh light the cavs up this season! Take that classless cavs fans!

What does that have to do with what LeBron did to them and that organization? He was what a team could call truly their own, and they were lucky enough to draft one of their own. Maybe he shouldn't have called Lebron out like that but for every action there's a reaction. No athlete has ever held a handful of teams hostage for a couple of weeks, not telling anybody anything about what he's thinking of doing, only to air his own "special" on a joke network, and then stab a franchise and it's fans in the heart. Do you know who controlled that team? LeBron did. They asked him what he wanted and he told them who to get. They bent over backwards for him to build around him and finally bring home a championship, and the loser couldn't even deliver it when they needed a leader. He keeps them strapped this whole free agency, forcing them to not be able to sign any free agents because they have their money ready for one of their own to stay, only for him to bail on them like a coward and now all of the rest of the good free agent players are gone. He didn't even call them up personally to say thank you and goodbye, or didn't even help them to compensate with a sign and trade. LeBron became a joke, and always will be known for what he just pulled off.

And I like how you call another city's fans classless. How would you feel if our most beloved athlete, say Yzerman (if hockey was even bigger than basketball or football), came straight out of metro Detroit and we drafted him as one of our very own, became an icon and all that, management kisses his ass as he demands who he wants to come play here with him, still can't deliver a championship, then when free agency hits, he holds the team hostage on his own national TV show because he's a huge egomaniac, then decides to bolt like a coward to a stacked team to make it easier for him to win a championship, basically spitting in our faces? You'd feel embarrassed and sick to your stomach, wouldn't you? Act like you wouldn't be pissed off and react out of emotion. I'm sure a few out there would burn his jersey.

Come to think of it, I seem to recall how people here react to Hossa-- Pretty tasteless sometimes. Or even Fedorov. I just don't understand how people disregard what LeBron just did to them but yet call out their fans for being classless, yet most people here talk s*** about Fedorov and Hossa leaving and don't even know the whole story about why.

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Ok buddy. Bosh, Wade and LeBron can win a championship by accident.

About the rest of it: Way too douchy and disrespectful. I don't really care what fans in New York or New Jersey think but for the Cleveland fans this must have been gutting. At the same time, if you didn't see this coming then you are blind. He's always said he wants to win championships - because that is how you become counted among the truly great - and Miami gives him the best chance. Maybe Chicago but :S.

Yeah, because you become truly great by piggybacking other great players to win a championship. Maybe this would've been different if Cleveland traded him to Miami and he got pissed and wanted to prove something, but give me a break. He bailed, and somewhere in the U.S., people like Kobe, Jordan, Magic, Bird and Bill Russell are laughing their asses off at how much of a joke he is.

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Yeah, because you become truly great by piggybacking other great players to win a championship. Maybe this would've been different if Cleveland traded him to Miami and he got pissed and wanted to prove something, but give me a break. He bailed, and somewhere in the U.S., people like Kobe, Jordan, Magic, Bird and Bill Russell are laughing their asses off at how much of a joke he is.

Agreed. It would have been much better for his legacy for him to win a championship the way that Kobe now has done twice without another big-name superstar on the same team as you.

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Yeah, because you become truly great by piggybacking other great players to win a championship. Maybe this would've been different if Cleveland traded him to Miami and he got pissed and wanted to prove something, but give me a break. He bailed, and somewhere in the U.S., people like Kobe, Jordan, Magic, Bird and Bill Russell are laughing their asses off at how much of a joke he is.

... If you really think that Lebron will not be a major factor in any championship Miami may win then good for you. Any title he would've won with Cleveland would've been rated much higher but why risk it? The fact that he pissed on Cleveland and set the place on fire as he left doesn't make his reason for leaving any less relevant. You may dislike him for it but if he wants to win going to Miami makes sense.

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... If you really think that Lebron will not be a major factor in any championship Miami may win then good for you. Any title he would've won with Cleveland would've been rated much higher but why risk it? The fact that he pissed on Cleveland and set the place on fire as he left doesn't make his reason for leaving any less relevant. You may dislike him for it but if he wants to win going to Miami makes sense.

I never said that. I'm pretty sure you misunderstood my post because that's not where I was going with it.

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Dan Gilbert, the native Detroiter who owns Livonia-based Quicken Loans, as well as the Cavaliers, sent the sports world reeling Friday following a stunning verbal assault against LeBron James, the superstar who bolted Cleveland for a free-agent contract with Miami.

Gilbert's words, released as part of a Web site letter to Cavaliers fans late Thursday night, were so bitter and inflammatory, they threatened to upstage the very announcement that unleashed Gilbert's ire: James' decision to take his sublime talents to another town and team.

There were charges by Gilbert that James "quit" in this year's playoff loss to Boston; that he had engaged in a "cowardly betrayal" of Cleveland and its fans; that he had crafted a "narcissistic, self-promotional build-up" to his announcement that was "unlike anything ever witnessed in the history of sports and probably the history of entertainment."

Gilbert, though, had hoped until the announcement to extend James' seven-year reign as Cleveland's franchise megastar. The speed with which Gilbert turned on James, and the ferocity of his intensely statements, were what left so many aghast Friday.

"(Gilbert) sounds like a sore loser," former news anchor Bill Bonds said. "I frankly could care less where James plays. Is he that important to American society? Maybe what Gilbert is proving is that money is more important to him than it is to LeBron James."

Neither Gilbert nor staffers at Quicken Loans responded to Detroit News requests Friday for an interview with the owner and Michigan State graduate who last month missed on a $30-million bid to hire Spartans coach Tom Izzo as the Cavaliers coach.

But understandable.

Gilbert's wrath followed a long, exhausting vigil by the Cavaliers, and much of the NBA, as James pondered lavish free-agent offers from teams hoping to land a 25-year-old virtuoso. His decision was announced during a prime-time ESPN production Thursday, an event both theatrical and grandiose, and a parallel to the weekslong anticipation that hovered over James and his eventual choice.

Among those stunned by Gilbert's outburst was Spencer Haywood, a late 1960s star at Detroit Pershing High and the University of Detroit, who turned pro after his sophomore year and joined the NBA as a much-publicized free agent after courts decided in his favor in a landmark anti-trust case in 1970.

Haywood said, with a dark chuckle, he could appreciate Gilbert's rage.

"This is like your daughter telling you, 'I'm going to quit basketball,' " Haywood said, " 'and, by the way, I'm running away from home, too.' "

Jerry Stackhouse, the former Pistons guard who last season played for the Bucks, said Gilbert's outburst was understandable but hypocritical.

Stackhouse's experience is that "players can get traded and moved all around and nothing is said. Now a player has the leverage and he goes nuts.

"I don't think he (James) owed it to Dan Gilbert or anybody," Stackhouse said. "It's kind of weird how much he loved LeBron James all these years, and then (James) decides to not come back and (Gilbert) has all this disdain for him.

"Now that really tells you this is a business."

Words won't affect Cavs

There was speculation Friday that Gilbert's verbal artillery could make it difficult for the Cavaliers to attract future free agents, which will be one necessary option for a club no longer in possession of the star known as "King James."

"If I was him I wouldn't have done it that way, but he has every right to do it," former NBA coach and current ESPN analyst Jeff Van Gundy said. "A player doesn't play for an owner. It's not like you have everyday contact. You play for the coach. Had Byron Scott said that, it may have had a more lasting impact."

Cavaliers general manager Chris Grant was asked during a Friday news conference if he feared Gilbert's words would make his job tougher.

"Dan's owned the team for five years," Grant said. "I think he's earned the right to voice his opinion."

Scott, who was hired as the Cavaliers coach after Izzo declined Gilbert's offer, said: "An owner acting that way, he's showing a lot of passion for the city -- a lot of passion for the organization. I thought he was speaking from his heart."

Greg Kelser, the former Pistons player and Michigan State All-American, tended to agree with the Cavaliers brass.

"I don't think (the fallout) will have a lasting effect because money talks," Kelser said. "You have to understand that Dan Gilbert will be coming at them (free agents) with his best and the most charming sales pitch he can come up with.

"I don't think this is going to have a lasting effect on the Cavaliers. The absence of LeBron James might, but (Gilbert's) words won't."

Frustration shows

James, an Akron native, had been with the Cavaliers since 2003, when he was taken No. 1 in the draft out of high school. Gilbert bought the Cavaliers in 2005, and his team, behind James, reached the NBA Finals in 2007, losing to the Spurs. But even with James being named the NBA's MVP the past two seasons, the Cavaliers have been thwarted in their bid to deliver a title to a city bruised by tough times, and even tougher luck through the years with its star-crossed pro teams. The frustration, followed by Thursday's crushing news, was apparently enough to send Gilbert on his tirade.

"It's not about him leaving," Gilbert wrote. "It's the disrespect. It's time for people to hold these athletes accountable for their actions. Is this the way you raise your children? I've been holding this all in for a long time."

I

n a phone conversation later with the Associated Press, Gilbert said of James: "He has gotten a free pass. People have covered up for him for way too long. Tonight we saw who he really is."

Stackhouse all but shook his head Friday at a tantrum he believed Gilbert already regretted.

"It's human nature to be mad during the heat of the moment," Stackhouse said. "Sometimes, it's good to take a shower and then do an interview.

"You just lost your cash cow," Stackhouse said, speaking of Gilbert's disposition on Thursday night. "That's going to hurt anybody.

"Hopefully, he comes back and apologizes, and acknowledges that he made a mistake."

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I never said that. I'm pretty sure you misunderstood my post because that's not where I was going with it.

I was referring to this:

Yeah, because you become truly great by piggybacking other great players to win a championship.

But I guess it's kind of irrelevant either way.

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Ok buddy. Bosh, Wade and LeBron can win a championship by accident.

About the rest of it: Way too douchy and disrespectful. I don't really care what fans in New York or New Jersey think but for the Cleveland fans this must have been gutting. At the same time, if you didn't see this coming then you are blind. He's always said he wants to win championships - because that is how you become counted among the truly great - and Miami gives him the best chance. Maybe Chicago but :S.

The 3 of those guys can't win a championship by themselves.Bench scoring is crucial in playoffs so you have to have solid role players to go along with the superstars.LeBron always said he loved Cleveland and he'd do anything to bring a championship to the city.It was a total cheapshot what he did.Waited it all out and put it on a 1 hour show on ESPN???What a ******* disgrace.I'm glad Dan Gilbert stood up for the city and the organization becuase it seems like these days,people are more and more afraid to say what they think.

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I was referring to this:

But I guess it's kind of irrelevant either way.

Yes I know what you're referring to and the point I was making was that, yes I know they will most likely win a championship and yes he will obviously be a major factor, but my comment was directed towards his legacy in doing it. No one's gonna consider him "great" for winning championships when he had to piggyback two other great players to do it. But after thinking about it, maybe he really isn't that great of a player as crazy as that sounds if he needs to run to Wade for "help."

I don't know, this whole thing sickens me. Even though I'm a big NBA fan, and watched plenty of seasons, I just never thought players of this caliber would consider something like this and be all buddy-buddy about it. I remember back in the 90's when players actually hated each other and how great it was.

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Rev. Jesse Jackson on Cavs owner Dan Gilbert's comments about LeBron James

CHICAGO -- Jesse Jackson criticized Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert on Sunday, saying Gilbert sees LeBron James as a "runaway slave" and that the owner's comments after the free-agent forward decided to join the Miami Heat put the player in danger.

His feelings of betrayal personify a slave master mentality. He sees LeBron as a runaway slave. This is an owner employee relationship -- between business partners -- and LeBron honored his contract.

Shortly after James announced his decision last week, Gilbert fired off an incendiary letter to Cleveland's fans, ripping the 25-year-old and promising to deliver a title before James wins one. He called James' decision "cowardly" and later told The Associated Press he believes James quit during a handful of Cavaliers playoff games.

"He has gotten a free pass," Gilbert told the AP in a phone interview late Thursday night. "People have covered up for [James] for way too long. Tonight we saw who he really is."

Jackson said Gilbert's comments were "mean, arrogant and presumptuous."

"He speaks as an owner of LeBron and not the owner of the Cleveland Cavaliers," the reverend said in a release from his Chicago-based civil rights group, the Rainbow PUSH Coalition. "His feelings of betrayal personify a slave master mentality. He sees LeBron as a runaway slave. This is an owner employee relationship -- between business partners -- and LeBron honored his contract."

Messages were left Sunday night seeking comment from Gilbert, the Cavaliers and James.

Jackson also called Gilbert's comments an attack on all NBA players and said the owner should face a "challenge" from the league and the players' association.

NBA spokesman Tim Frank declined comment.

Things always seem to get worse when Jackson comes in.

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Yes I know what you're referring to and the point I was making was that, yes I know they will most likely win a championship and yes he will obviously be a major factor, but my comment was directed towards his legacy in doing it. No one's gonna consider him "great" for winning championships when he had to piggyback two other great players to do it. But after thinking about it, maybe he really isn't that great of a player as crazy as that sounds if he needs to run to Wade for "help."

I don't know, this whole thing sickens me. Even though I'm a big NBA fan, and watched plenty of seasons, I just never thought players of this caliber would consider something like this and be all buddy-buddy about it. I remember back in the 90's when players actually hated each other and how great it was.

Classic Detroit/Chicago rivalry in which Detroit refused to shake their hands after the playoffs in (91?).

Not to mention LeBron did the same thing 2 years ago, very poor sport. His rationalization was that you don't congratulate someone that just beat you. What a baby.

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