“He speaks as an owner of LeBron and not the owner of the Cleveland Cavaliers,” Jackson told The Associated Press. “His feelings of betrayal personify a slave-master mentality. He sees LeBron as a runaway slave.” “LeBron is not a child, nor is he bound to play on Gilbert’s plantation and be demeaned,” Jackson said. “He has been a model citizen and has inspired the children of Akron, Cleveland, the state of Ohio and the United States.”
Full Story: NY Daily News
Does Jesse Jackson have a point? You can read the Cavs owner’s full letter HERE.
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isn’t that all atheletes bein treated like that..nothin new…..
Did I miss his comments on Oscar Grant? *sigh*
Jackson’s right. I’m not from Cleveland but come on LeBron gave you 7 years of dream, let the dude do what he wants
no he doesnt have a point..this is retarded
INTERPRETATION: This is what Dan Gilbert meant to say in his open letter [clicky.me]
Slaves make 15 million a year? Shit sign me up!
I guess from that stand point he does have a point…but is not necessary to point that out. The owner went over board…Lebron made that guy millions of dollars and he’s so greedy that he went ballistic once Lebron James left the city of clevelend..so in actuality it wasn’t about him leaving as it was more about his pockets and his trusts funds.
@SouthPaw…my dude just hit it right over the head (pause)
I think that is the most logical explanation that anyone has come up with thus far.
Let’s face it, Lebron gave the city of Cleveland all that he could, and he didn’t get anything back in return. I don’t fault him one bit for leaving the way he did because he was probably fed up with the bullshit there in Cleveland, and with him having such an emotional attachment to that area, the last thing he needs is for people to be all up in his ear about how loyal he needed to be to the city and clouds his judgment. At the end of the day, he wasn’t going to win the chip in Cleveland, point blank! Don’t be a Dan Marino Lebron (no pun intended..lol).
Niggas still won’t beat my Lakers!!
Fuck this nigga this nigga always brings race into some shit to make him self relevant fuck this nigga
@jetsayjet whoa you said he gave the city all he had and didnt get anyhting in return. didnt he get paid for his services? and if he was a slave in cleveland he gon be one in miami by this logic. what is he getting in return in miami?
@micah A championship in Miami, something Cleveland couldn’t get with one of the best players in the NBA on their team.
Lebron signed a six-year, $110.1 million contract. If thats the case i wanna be a slave too. Yo LeBRON ! Fire your college dropout friends(Richard, Maverick, and Randy) they got U looking like stupid word to the wise.
this is how i feel about it. i think in some ways nba is like a slave plantation only cause they make millions and the owners make billions. but when your making millions shit that don’t make you no slave no more lol. but the behavior that these owners act is fucking disrespectful. owners should know there is no loyalty in the game cause after all they ain’t loyal to the players. if they don’t like you and your not making them money they either gonna trade you or drop you so where is the loyalty in that………. exactly. now the owner of the calvs is a bitch cause you had him for 7 years and didn’t really give him the tools to take the calvs all the way. so that’s on you buddy not lebron. he is only one man. he not superman. so he left so stop being a crybaby bitch and suck it up.
To all of the simple minded people still listening to this race baiting fool. If he was so pro-black why did he want to cut off Obama’s nuts? If he was really about calling out injustice where was he at for a good portion of Katrina or for Oscar Grant? He is just a different shade of Bill O’Reilly or Rush Limbaugh…they use the age old concept of race baiting to play on people’s ignorance.
did jesse jackson just drain his last bit of credibility or was that gone already when he expressed his desire to castrate our president. making this into a race issue is such a ridiculous stretch that i feel violently ill after trying to wrap my mind around it. i guess Oscar Grant isn’t a big enough story to give an attention whore his fix
jesse does have a point.i believe that is how gilbert saw lebron as the person making money for him, as his slave in a sense. when lebron leaves he is angry. in a business lebron fulfilled his contract obligations. any gm with common sense even though they are angry would have wished lebron all the best for his future endeavors. gilbert ended up only hurting the cavs more.
hey Jesse Jackson…SHUT UP!!! Comparing making millions to slavery…ughhhhh
“Fuck Jesse Jackson cause it ain’t about race now”- Game
I swear he always got some racist view on shit. What slave makes millions a year and sits in the lap of luxury? The Cavs owner was just mad cause the team and the city is worthless without LeBron. LeBron increased the value of the Cleveland franchise by $500 million and helped the economy of the city. Now that he’s gone the team and the city go to shit.
Jesse’s trippin
But Gilbert should have keep it professional. Now no big name player will ever play for Cleveland because of this letter.
@Neighborh00dc
Good point about the actual NBA team owners making the billions off of the teams. Most often there owners consist of white families that control and manage a team comprised of mostly all black athletes! Billions to millions? There will always be a point like this when money is in the picture.
I can also see a bit of Sharpton’s point but that stems from money too slightly as I wonder if he and the rest of the NBA world would be as upset if Lebron was not as great a ball player. I am certainly one to believe in Black independence and could empathize with Sharpton about Lebron leaving blacks and going with whites. Like they say maybe he is a sellout.
@nic I would def need to signup too if that’s what slaves are making nowadays. The word slave here is too deep for a situation like this
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damn this guys is really more a queen than Lebron is
just get over it it is what it is. What ever he is doing right now wont make him come back to Cavs he chose who he wants to play yeah it was a bitch move so fuck him just show him Cavs could do better with out him and not keep crying about this dumb shit like babies c’mon
if any1 knows any sports fan from Cleveland you would know why he reacted like that Cavs owner’s was speaking as fan how you go from king james to slave james fuck jesse jackson he jus wants to be seen lebron was the king of that city
Who isn’t a slave if they don’t own their own company? You gotta play it smart, and I’m sure he’s doing so. Squeeze every penny you can out of this. But give back to the community! More learning centers!
I don’t fault him anymore for leaving though, because that’s his right. I just think you’re a bit of a coward if you take the easy way out. Try doing it with the team you came with.
nba, nfl, baseball, soccer, boxing, whatever the sport the owners are the ones making the bigger bucks… just like a regular job the ceo’s sit back while everyone else bust they ass…… you can’t put racism into this…… it’s just the way it is……
what job those the employee makes more????????? NONE.
THIS GUY JUST WANTS ATTENTION…. aND THE REASON BE IS CAUSE THE LEBRON STORY IS MORE IMPORTANT AND FRONT PAGE NEWS……
Jesse Jackson made sense. He never once called Gilbert racist or made it a racist issue, just because he used the term “slave”. Try using the definition of slave and not what you remember from history class. Owners and team management do treat their players like they own them. The “runaway slave” notion would work regardless of if the race roles were reversed or both were the same to begin with. That’s how this game is played. Don’t pretend that they don’t give players 48 hour notice that they’ve been traded across the country. They don’t give 2 sh!ts about the athlete (or their families that have to pick up and move if they plan on living in the same area as their husband/ father), just the profit and bottom line. Stop looking at how much the player makes, I know plenty of people that feel like a slave at their jobs too (and clearly aren’t working for free).
Jesse Jackson has a point, but of course it gets clouded in all the other nonsense he spews.
Dan Gilbert DID react like a slave owner who just lost his most prized slave. For that fool to call Lebron a coward and whatever else was just dumb at best. Lebron fulfilled his contract and decided to take his talents somewhere else. That does not make him a coward. We can argue HOW Lebron went about doing it, but him leaving should not be a problem in and of itself.
The NBA in general is run like a plantation. Once you sign that contract you are no longer allowed to have an opinion. Ever heard an NBA star talk about anything even remotely socially revelant? We had the biggest most important election in black/American history and how many athletes voiced their support for (or even against Obama)??
What I also agree with Jesse about is that if Lebron quit on the team in the playoffs, in not 1, not 2, not 3, but 4 games then why the fuck would Gilbert want to resign Lebron for??
And the second I saw the clips of Lebron’s jersey being burned I thought about the KKK. A bunch of white people, drinking and burning shit in the front yard. Sound familiar? For them to burn a symbolic representation of LeBron himself is very very dangerous slope to ride on.
tell this dumb fuck to shutup if he doesnt kno nothing about the business
what he said makes sense. The owner of the cavs acted like a bitch
You all can say what you want about jesse jackson, but at least he’s one of few people who actually spoke up In lebrons defense unlike these other uncle toms, sitting there bashing lebron right along with everybody else. people are calling him a coward, sell-out, quitter and every other name In the book, and for what? because he decided not to stay In Cleveland so now he’s the bad guy, so now they wanna destroy his image and try to make him out to be something he’s not, he’s been with Cleveland damn near 10 years he fulfilled his contract and has been faithful to Cleveland and the fans but as soon as he said he wants to play In miami the whole city turns on him..start burning his jerseys saying he wasn’t good enough anyway, he can’t come back to Cleveland , he’s this and he’s that..this situation was blown way out of proportion.
You niggas need to watch your mouths when talking shit about Rev. Jackson. He was right there next to Dr. King marching, going to jail and being attacked for you disrespectful mother fuckers.
And because he was there I think his mindset is still there at times…not everything is about race because the NBA overall can be called a slave system. The guy was just mad…stop making it more about something that it’s not just to be relevant it seems…smh
This guy has no idea what he is talking about! Do slaves make more than 10 million a year or get treated like a king in a city? I don’t think so! Dan Gilbert made some great points and honestly I don’t think he should of made this an hour long because Cleveland fans took it hard because he was a great person to have on the Cavs. But Dan Gilbert did get me excited for the Heat vs. Cavs game and hopefully we will kick their butts!
it’s crazy that the clevland fan turn their back’s on him cause he left. i mean what did you expect for him to stay and not go somewhere where he can win. i mean people wanted him to go to nyc. knicks fans really. you really wanted him there for what so he can be in the same position he left from lol. your bum ass knicks sucks face facts. ya need more players than stodimire . and they even hate him more cause he went to mia. you know if i was him and as soon as i play either the calvs or knicks amma play like it’s game 7 of the finals and drop 50 on ya so ya can hate me even more. i can see him doing that to both teams. fans are only as loyal as you can throw them and it ain’t far.
@tonyp that championship aint guaranteed, you were probably the same that guaranteed a championship when antwon jamison was traded to cleveland, i predicted a fail with that move, and lakers still have the best 3 in gasol kobe and artest, haslem and mike miller naw try again
@Neighborh00dc
Good point about the actual NBA team owners making the billions off of the teams. Most often there owners consist of white families that control and manage a team comprised of mostly all black athletes! Billions to millions? There will always be a point like this when money is in the picture.
I can also see a bit of Sharpton’s point but that stems from money too slightly as I wonder if he and the rest of the NBA world would be as upset if Lebron was not as great a ball player. I am certainly one to believe in Black independence and could empathize with Sharpton about Lebron leaving blacks and going with whites. Like they say maybe he is a sellout.
@nic I would def need to signup too if that’s what slaves are making nowadays. The word slave here is too deep for a situation like this
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this is comming from the same guy who hated on obama for being the 1st black president….the letter came out that way cause he was pissed off like everyone else from cleveland
fuck jesse jackson him and sharpton always want to turn it into a race thing fuck them
isn’t this the same guy that said he wanted to chop obama’s dick off lmaoo
Listen, When LeBron came to the Cavs, the organization was worth 230 Million, when he left? a whopping 450 Million. He doubled that business in 7 years, something Dan Gilbert did not. This is the way this selfish assholes treats someone who doubled their business? There comes a point in a relationship when both parties have to contribute evenly. LeBron made a decision, he is not a sheep.
The first thing I thought when I read that letter, were damn, this guy is really the definition of a slave master cracker. I said this BEFORE Jesse did. Cracka ass cracka… LeBron dont owe you shit. I dont hear boshs owner doin that shit, or Shaq when he left Orlando, or Mcgrady, or anyone.. CAVS be lucky you got 7 years, you shitty ass organization… Dan Gilbert just validated Lebrons response and took all the pressure off him. Thank you Dan “CRACKA ASS CRACKA” Gilbert…