I am not a professional sports fan or expert in professional sports regulation but it is obvious the professional sports teams are all owned by a small number of astoundingly rich and powerful global cut-throats - in many or most cases monopolists in extremely socially repugnant fields like banking, ticketmaster, cable, loans, waste management, and cruising - and they each always get their way, one way or the other. They control a select set of GLOBAL monopoly franchise, licensing and ticketing system that restrict all free trade in their industry to the point of making both players and fans slaves to the owners collective, greedy, collusive antitrustful whims.
And there can be no doubt the owners of all the professional sports teams acts as one, so that the only uncertainly in the outcomes of anything about professional sports is in the physical act of the players at the moment of action - and one can question how much of that is determined by the talent of the players versus the demands of the owners - e.g. Gilbert was a bookie - Gilbert plans to own pro sports and casinos in the industry and markets betting on them - and Gilbert says the Cavs games were thrown by his star player LeBron.
The LeBron James special promoting his decision to change teams from Gilbert owned Cavaliers to Arison owned Heat was on Disney and Hearst owned cable-only ESPN, surely broadcast on Cleveland Indians owning Dolan owned Cablevision - it was not LeBron's show it was the team owners' show - remember this is not a free market but rather monopoly or more accurately communist control structure where the players have no say at all on their careers, including how and where they are presented to the media.
I have no question LeBron is 100% a pawn in a sick little machine in all this - like being a rapper he is part of an evil industry and all the money in the world won't make it worth the ride - the personal satisfaction of achieving his goals may.
I hope my gut instincts are right and LeBron hasn't sold out at all in all of this - he has shown to me in his style over the past six months that the process has hurt him - he is not a happy participant in this play - I hope he continues to hate the industry haters and keeps loving the confused Cleveland crew that still loves him through all the hurt - I believe enough of the truth shall come forward about the Basketball industry abusing their monopoly rights to show LeBron has been a great leader of his community, against a truly evil empire.
I Believe Obama Should Appoint A Committee To Investigate Heat, Cavs And All Professional Sports Owners' Antitrust Practices