What We Can Learn from LeBron

No, this blog did not just turn into one about fantasy basketball, but we do need to discuss what happened on Sunday.

The just-concluded NBA season turned into a referendum on "The Decision" even before it started. On the day after Dirk Nowitzki and Mark Cuban got their hands on the Larry O'Brien Trophy for the first time, everyone seemed to have something to say about LeBron James. As usual, Bill Simmons' Game 6 diary had more than its fair share of insight. One of his observations: James surrounded himself with a lot of enablers, including "his high school friends (who assumed an inordinately crucial role in his life without any real experience), his agents (who never threw their bodies in front of "The Decision"), and Miami's management (who walked him into another fiasco with the Heat's Welcome Party)."

Yes, James has made his share of mistakes, including the "my critics have problems of their own" comment. But he did not get here by himself. Here is a partial lists of the errors and their makers.

1. Anyone who counseled James to go directly from high school to the NBA Draft. There is an old joke about the only person who could hold Michael Jordan to under 20 points a game: Dean Smith. Football players are surrounded by coaches who can (and do) teach their players and use the threat of the bench to drive their lessons home. But James' resume does not have anyone playing an analogous role. No one at his high school or the Heat really could have said to him, "You're not getting any playing time until you learn how to solve a zone defense." (Pat Riley could change that, but we'll have to wait and see.)
2. ESPN. Everyone has villified James for orchestrating "The Decision," but no one seems to realize that the alleged Worldwide Leader could have stopped that fiasco dead in its tracks. They could have said, "This thing is a cluster bomb waiting to happen, and some of the shrapnel will tear through us. We're not going to be a part of it." They didn't. They failed us.
3. The Miami Heat front office. Yes, James and Dwyane Wade and that other guy wanted to play together, but someone in the front office could have decided not to bring them together. They stopped putting together an NBA team and decided to assemble a fantasy team.

Anyone who has put together a fantasy team, in football or NASCAR or basketball or anything else, will tell you that one of the dumbest things you can do is pull all your players from the same team. Yes, Peyton Manning throws a lot of touchdowns, but you want to have receivers from other teams, just in case...well, let's not even say it. The Heat decided that they did not have to worry about things like chemistry or role players or any of the things that help a team win games, even when things are not going so well.

All-star squads don't win real championships. Teams do.

The People's Choice - New Hampshire

If it's Friday, that must mean two things: Dave Blaney will struggle to qualify a car that will be parked before the race's first commercial break, and you, the Internet, have chosen the lineup for the People's Pitstop for Sunday's Sprint Cup race.

Here are the drivers in the mix for the Internet's favorite fantasy NASCAR team.

A List. He only had to win five of the season's first 16 races to do it, but Denny Hamlin has earned your confidence. He won this poll in a rout and will get his first starting spot of the fantasy racing season over Jeff Gordon.

B List. To paraphrase the Sundays, here's where the certainty ends. We had a logjam in this poll. Using points as the tiebreaker, we have four drivers competing for two starting spots: Jeff Burton, Dale Earnhardt Jr., Clint Bowyer and Martin Truex Jr. This will come down to the qualifying session. The drivers who qualify the best will start.

C List. Another tie here. This time it comes down to Paul Menard and Sam Hornish Jr. Again, we'll use the qualifying session as the tiebreaker, and the People's Pitstop could end up with more juniors than this year's NBA Draft.

We'll update this post after the qualifying session. In the meantime, the new poll about you know who is up and open for voting.

10:25 p.m. UPDATE. The qualifying results are in. In addition to Hamlin, your starters are Clint Bowyer (who starts 9th), Jeff Burton (17th) and Sam Hornish Jr. (8th). And for those of you who don't think "football" involves diving like Greg Louganis, we'll be back with another fantasy football preview.