As you've probably gathered by now, I'm a big Bethlehem Shoals fan (which, in the basketball blogiverse, is like saying I'm a huge Led Zep fan. But I digress.), and his latest from FanHouse articulates my general thinking about LeBron James's recent actions better than I could.

I still think that a lot of the issue surrounding LeBron are more complicated than we like to make them. Even in this absolutely goofy latest development -- a world tour befitting a campaigning politician -- there's evidence that we're seeing a 21st century Wilt Chamberlain. LeBron may be indefensible, but that doesn't mean he's an outright scoundrel. We live to understand.

Except today, with James mouthing quotes so foul and presumptuous I can't stand to retype them, I don't really care about a rational middle ground. I was a teenaged LeBron James defender, and now, the pendulum has come swinging back in the other direction. On a gut level, as a fan and writer, I feel right now like James deserves no benefit of the doubt, no close reading. This is clown-ish, buffoon-ish behavior that plays into every negative assumption anyone's ever had about James -- or the rest of the NBA.