No matter how much it hurts the residents of Cleveland, ‘The King’ was ready to return if he could have convinced Bosh to come to town. The Cavalier organization was already going through changes with the firing of head coach Mike Brown and the hiring of Byron Scott. If Bosh shunned James’ invitation to take the same offer from Wade to come to South Beach, then that speaks volumes about the state of the organization.

Bosh apparently did not see the same upside in Cleveland as he did in Miami and you can even take it a step further by making an assumption that he felt Wade was a better teammate than James. There was no guarantee that James would join them with the Heat when Bosh agreed to sign.

Speaking of that, Bosh deciding on Miami played a big part in Wade not signing with his hometown Bulls. The Chicago native was torn apart by not coming home, but ultimately chose to stay in Florida once Bosh told him his intentions.

Weighing his options, James had to see the grass greener on the southern side of the street. Without Bosh, Cleveland did not look as rosy. And although the Knicks signed Amar’e Stoudemire to a five-year, $100-million contract trying to lure him, James must have felt that New York was still years away from contending for a championship. Chicago? Perhaps if Wade had signed there, but James would still have been playing in Michael Jordan’s shadow forever.

When it was all said and done, James choosing Miami should not have come as a surprise, and it didn’t if you read our article posted earlier in the day of “The Decision.” What did cause some shock is that it was Bosh, and not James, who played the biggest part in free agency.

The cyst is reported to have nothing to do with Rodriguez’s steroid use.

With all of the distractions that he has had with the steroid admissions, his cousin and trainer and a statement that could (and should) be looked at as a knock against teammate Derek Jeter, all A-Rod kept saying was that it felt good to be playing baseball again. 

Rodriguez has been preparing for the World Baseball Classic with the team from the Dominican Republic and made a statement praising Jose Reyes, who is also suiting up for his home country. “I wish he was leading off for our team, playing on our team,” he told reporters in Florida. Reyes plays shortstop, the same position as Jeter, who, predictably, had no comment.

Photo by Bill Menzel

Some people never learn. Even when their team is going through a miserable season in which they were lucky to have the one win they can show for themselves, selfishness rises to the top. In the case of the Cincinatti Bengals, what could go wrong has gone wrong. Head coach Marvin Lewis somehow manages to keep his job as the inmates have run the asylum during his watch. The leader of the pack has been Chad Johnson…oh, excuse me…Ocho Cinco. It pains me to have to do that. On second though, screw him. I’ll call him Johnson if he likes it or not!

While his antics may have been amusing in the past when the team was playing decent football, that act has gone cold mighty fast. Whatever the reason(s) why the attention-seeking Johnson was deactivated approximately 10 hours before a Thursday night kickoff, the fact of the matter is that he is a lightning rod for controversy. Is he talented? There is no questionof that, so to leave him out of a game where he could have made a difference is even more glaring.

What appears to have occurred is Johnson having a disagreement with one of the assistant coaches during a team meeting and him possibly walking out of the room. What makes this even more annoying is teammate John Thorton stating that Johnson “has done worse” in the past and didn’t get suspended, and that Lewis was making a “statement” by doing so. The problem that I – and everyone else should – have with this is that if Lewis had done his job before and layed down the law, Johnson would have never dreamed of committing such insubordinate acts, if he even was still on the team.

Maybe this is just another prime example of why Lewis took so long to get a head coaching job in the NFL. He was being lauded as such a great defensive mind when he was on the staff of the Super Bowl champion Baltimore Ravens, and rightfully so. But to be the ‘bad guy’ and have to throw down the hammer is a totally different situation that being an assistant coach.