The front page of the Cleveland Plain Dealer today is about as bleak as they come.

After listening to me rant about LeBron by the water cooler, Kevin Williamson (not a basketball fan) asked me why basketball fans who aren’t from Cleveland are so unhappy with the decision. “He went to the best team to make the most money he could possibly make and live in South Beach, and you’re mad at him?”

Yes. First, we have no idea whether the Heat will end up being the best team. We’ve seen these three-headed monsters collapse before, especially when they involve a player coming in from the outside who is desperate for a ring, joining a player or players who already have one. Think Barkley joining Drexler and Olajuwon in Houston or Malone joining Shaq and Kobe in L.A.

Second, he’s not making the most money he possibly could. Sure, Florida’s taxes are lower, but by leaving Cleveland he forfeits a guaranteed sixth year on his contract. In Miami, he can only sign a five-year deal, meaning if he sustains a career-ending injury or something else happens to lower his value as a player, he will have lost money — up to $30 million — by leaving Cleveland.

Third, if you want to know why non-Cleveland basketball fans think LeBron’s decision to leave Cleveland for Miami — specifically Miami — and announcing it on a one-hour TV special, was a low-class decision, there are two reasons, both better explained by people who cover sports for a living. First, here’s J.A. Adande:

LeBron is free to go wherever he wants, whatever suits him best. Just because he’s always lived in Akron and Cleveland doesn’t mean he should always stay there. … But it’s not too much to ask him to be respectful on the way out. In this case promotion took precedence over protocol. He strung everyone along, tried to build the drama at the expense of the common courtesy of notifying teams of his plans so they could get about constructing their teams. Everyone associated with this looks bad.

Second, here’s Bill Simmons:

I think it’s a cop-out. Any super-competitive person would rather beat Dwyane Wade than play with him. … In May, after the Cavs were ousted in the conference semifinals, I wrote that LeBron was facing one of the greatest sports decisions ever: “winning (Chicago), loyalty (Cleveland) or a chance at immortality (New York).”
I never thought he would pick “HELP!”

So, it’s not just that LeBron left Cleveland. It’s the way that he did it, and it’s the team that he chose to join. But, as I wrote on Twitter last night, the silver lining is that the NBA has a true villain/villainous team now, which will make for a lot of dramatic and interesting games. Think Brett Favre returning to Green Bay in a purple uniform was bad? Oooooh boy. Just you wait.