Lutz

I know you’re probably a LeBron James hater. Most people are nowadays. I get it, because of the way he went about leaving the Cleveland Cavaliers last summer, the whole ESPN spectacle. No doubt, he gave it to Cleveland and it was distasteful.

LeBron James

But let’s take all of that ugliness out of the equation for a minute and look at James’ decision for what it was, an attempt to win championships. He had finally accepted the fact that it wasn’t going to happen in Cleveland, that Cavaliers management was not going to step up and give him the tools (i.e. talent around him) to do that.

The Cavs made it to the NBA Finals in 2007 and were swept by the San Antonio Spurs. Then Cleveland went about trying to add those final missing pieces to the puzzle but was never able to find them. Players like Ben Wallace, Wally Szerbiac, Mo Williams, Antawn Jamison and Shaquille O’Neal helped the Cavs improve their regular-season record, but Cleveland was consistently pushed back in the playoffs.

James was in Cleveland for seven seasons. That’s a long time. I don’t think he would have ever left if the Cavaliers had been more serious about surrounding him with talent. All-star type of talent.

In James’ seven seasons with the Cavs, he played with a total of two other All-Stars. Zydrunas Ilgauskas joined James on the 2004-05 Eastern Conference squad while Williams was a replacement for then-Toronto forward Chris Bosh on the 2008-09 Eastern Conference All-Star team.

Two other all-stars in seven seasons.

By the time Jamison (a two-time All-Star) and O’Neal (an All-Star 14 times) showed up in Cleveland to help James, they were far past their primes.

In Miami, he has joined forces with perennial All-Stars Bosh and Dwyane Wade. It took the Heat a while to mesh. There were some concerning growing pains as the Big 2 and Bosh (why can’t somebody come up with a really creative nickname for the Miami trio?) figured things out.

Honestly, there were a lot of times this season when I thought the Heat were not serious championship contenders this season. Even with three outstanding players and two who are among the game’s best four or five today, it looked as if Miami needed to add another piece or two before winning titles became a reasonable goal.

But the Heat has played great in the playoffs. Wade and James have figured out how not only to co-exist, but to thrive. They have easily put their egos aside for the betterment of the team while Bosh is picking his spots and has actually been the go-to guy in a few of these playoff victories.

Other players like Udonis Haslem, Mike Miller, Mike Bibby and Mario Chalmers are filling their supporting roles admirably and the Heat looks like a good bet to beat Dallas in the Finals, which start Tuesday night in Miami.

James was an almost universally loved player in Cleveland, where he tried and tried to lift the underdog Cavs to a championship. It was a fantastic story as he played for his near-hometown team (James is from Akron). Ultimately, though, it’s the Cleveland management that is most to blame for this nasty taste in the mouths of Cavs fans.

Again, I don’t condone the way James went about leaving town. ESPN should be ashamed of itself for airing that charade. It was not the right way for James to conduct his business. I thought he was smarter than that.

Ultimately, though, it’s impossible to argue against his decision to leave Cleveland. He was beating his head against a wall there. You saw what the Cavs did this season without about the same cast of characters they surrounded James with in 2009-10. They went from 61 wins to the bottom of the league.

I haven’t forgiven James for his shoddy treatment of Cleveland fans. They were, no doubt, as disappointed with the front office’s continuous failed attempts to put a better team around him. But they didn’t deserve to be slapped in their faces.

However, I am pulling for James and Miami, even over a Dallas team I really like and a Mavericks player, Dirk Nowitzki, who has been the best player in these playoffs.

I want James to win championships. I want the Cleveland front office to step up and admit to the Cavs’ fan base that it did a poor job of surrounding an iconic player for all those years. As it is, that front office has been able to hind behind James’ awkwardly made decision to go to Miami.

James took his talents to South Beach because the Cavaliers didn’t surround him with enough talent on Lake Erie.

* I was watching the Cardinals beat the Cubs this afternoon (yea!), and the broadcasters started talking about former Cub and Cardinal Lou Brock, acquired by St. Louis in a trade with the Cubs in 1964 for right-handed pitcher Ernie Broglio. It’s one of the

Lou Brock steals his 105th base against San Diego in 1974, breaking Maury Wills' single-season record.

greatest trades in Cardinals history and, thus, one of the worst for the Cubs.

Any discussion of Brock – who by the way will be 72 this year – makes me think of his ability to steal a base. He pilfered 938 of them during his 19-year career, including a then-record 118 at the age of 35 in 1974. Can you imagine a 35-year-old stealing 118 bases?

Rickey Henderson eventually broke both the single-season and career stolen base records held by Brock, but the former Cardinal still ranks second all-time in both categories.

The stolen base isn’t as much a part of the game of baseball as it used to be, but there are signs that the running game is making a comeback. So far during the 2011 season, there has been an average of 0.65 stolen bases per game, the highest since an 0.76 mark in 1999.

The strongest evidence that there was a Steroids Era in Major League Baseball rests with the numbers.

The seasons from 1980 through 1992 produced the most stolen bases in the game’s history. But when the ball started flying out of the ballpark with great regularity, the base paths got quieter. Only once from 1999-2008 did a season produce less than one home run per game (0.99 in 2005). But through the early part of the 2011 season there have been only 0.84 homers per game, which if it holds would be the lowest per-game average since 1992, when 0.65 homers were hit per game.

Stolen bases, obviously, decreased with all of the added home runs. Teams didn’t need to rely on taking extra bases to score runs, they could wait on a two- or three-run homer.

I like the home run as much as anyone, but it’s nice to see stolen bases becoming a bigger part of the game. It’s not like it was in the 1980s, when almost every team in baseball was running wild. But it’s better.

A player hasn’t stolen 80 bases since 1988, when Rickey Henderson swiped 93 for the New York Yankees and Vince Coleman stole 81 for the St. Louis Cardinals.

Jose Reyes (78 in 2007), Scott Podsednik (70 in 2004) and Jacoby Ellsbury (70 in 2009) are the only players with 70 or more stolen bases since 2000.

No players are on pace for that many steals in 2011, but there are already 14 players who have 10 or more stolen bases.

The current big leaguer with the most career steals is Chicago White Sox outfielder Juan Pierre, with 533. That ranks No. 30 all-time. Boston’s Carl Crawford is next on the active-player stolen base list with 414.

Stealing a base has been a dying art, but there are small signs that it is again becoming a point of emphasis. That’s good, because I always felt a sense of anticipation when Brock reached first base. I felt the same during the Whitey Herzog era in St. Louis. Herzog built his team around speed to fit the stadium in which the Cardinals played. Coleman, Ozzie Smith, Willie McGee and Lonnie Smith were all great sprinters who happened to be good baseball players, too.

Those fast St. Louis teams rank among my all-time favorites.

The Cardinals of today steal about a base a week. Running is not Tony La Russa’s thing; the Cardinals have had only one player reach 20 stolen bases since 2004 – Cesar Izturis swiped 24 in 2008.

* You can argue Phil Jackson suffered a blow to his legacy Sunday while his Lakers were being blown out and classless during a Game 4 playoff loss to the Dallas Mavericks while potentially on the cusp of being blown up.

I don’t buy it.

Jackson certainly was as mortified as everyone else when Lakers center Andrew Bynum took a cheap shot with an elbow against the

Phil Jackson hangs with his best girl, Jeanie Buss.

Mavericks’ tiny point guard, J.J. Berea, late in Sunday’s long-since-decided game in the NBA’s Western Conference semifinals.

With that elbow, Bynum not only knocked Berea to the floor, but also smacked his legendary coach upside the skull with inexcusable disrespect that made Jackson’s final game as a coach – if indeed, it is – memorable for all the wrong reasons.

In the right world, the Lakers would have taken their lumps like men. Bynum and Lamar Odum, who delivered a cheap-shot screen against Dallas star Dirk Nowitzki just a few minutes before Bynum cracked Berea, would have come out of the game in the fourth quarter with their dignity. They would have approached the bench and given a hug to the coach – the man – who has done so much for the Lakers and for them.

Instead, both were chided as they left the court at American Airlines Arena in Dallas, disgraced and you would think totally humiliated by their behavior.

Yet Bynum wasn’t apologetic after the game. He might be more so when NBA commissioner David Stern hands down what should be a lengthy suspension (I’m hoping for 10 games) to start the 2011-12 season.

Jackson, meanwhile, appears to be headed to his ranch in Montana with his gal pal, Jeanie Buss, the daughter of Lakers owner Jerry Buss. He takes with him 11 NBA championships, making him the most successful coach in the league’s history. Whether he’s the best coach in NBA history can be argued. I tend to believe he is while others point out that he was dealt hands that included Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant.

Yes, he was. But all great coaches have great players. And coaching in the NBA is all about handling the egos and personalities of egomaniacs, especially in this day and age. Nobody has been better at that than Jackson, although it appears he finally lost control of this team.

You could sense that Jackson struggled with the notion of returning this season after the Lakers won back-to-back championships in 2009 and 2010. But, as he noted during his post-game news conference Sunday, the allure of chasing a three-peat held special incentive. It was clear, though, that he found out early on this season that the Lakers probably didn’t have the right players, or the right chemistry, to be able to pull it off.

It was strange to hear Jackson say – out loud – that he was glad the season was over. That’s not the usual spiel from a coach who has just lost in the playoffs. But when he said it, I believed him. And I felt happy for him.

Jackson maintained his class while those around him toss theirs to the ground. Best of all, he doesn’t have to clean up the mess.