Peon's Place

As much as I am disappointed in LeBron’s decision, I am also sad that we will have nothing else to chat about in the office until the NFL begins warming up again.

The news that LeBron James is going to Miami to join Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh will surely have some anointing the Heat as next season’s favorites. Don’t expect many basketball people to be among them. “It’s not over with,” New York coach Mike D’Antoni said. “Nothing’s over.”

Miami has three of the best players in the NBA, but it takes 12 to fill a roster. And even if the trio keeps its word and takes less money than allowed, there still won’t be much cash left for the Heat to have many good choices. Certainly not enough to go sign their versions of Ron Artest and Lamar Odom, who helped Los Angeles pull out Game 7 of the NBA finals while Kobe Bryant was struggling. “I think whatever happens, I don’t think anyone is going to beat the Lakers anyway,” Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim said. “When you look at what the Lakers have, it’s really hard to beat them. That team is so good, but if they continue to get better and can stay healthy, it’s not going to matter who you put together.”

Still, the Heat now have a chance to do it, all because they took a chance in free agency and it paid off. The best players almost never leave as free agents in the NBA, where the league’s collective bargaining agreement allows them to receive longer contracts with bigger raises from their own clubs. Yet the Heat persuaded both James and Bosh to come to South Florida, even though it could mean leaving about $30 million on the table.

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A former police officer who is white was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter Thursday in the killing of an unarmed black man in Oakland, California.

Johannes Mehserle, who was a Bay Area Rapid Transit police officer at the time of the incident, was convicted in the shooting of 22-year-old Oscar Grant on a California train platform on January 1, 2009. Mehserle, who was on duty at the time, said at the trial that he intended to draw and fire his Taser rather than his gun, CNN affiliate KTVU reported.

The shooting was captured on a bystander’s cell-phone video camera. The video was widely circulated, and it spurred several protests and riots in and around Oakland.

LeBron James and his mother Gloria James are being sued for millions by a man who claims he tried to prove he’s the NBA star’s biological father, but LeBron and his mom tampered with the evidence in a diabolical cover-up.

The lawsuit is explosive; in it, 55-year-old Leicester Bryce Stovell claims he met Gloria in a D.C. area bar in 1984 and had unprotected sex with her on the night they met. He later found out she was 15-years-old at the time, he was 29. According to the docs, filed recently in federal court, Gloria has spent the rest of her life shielding LeBron from the truth. But the man making the claim isn’t some schmuck. He is a Princeton graduate who earned a law degree from the University of Chicago, and then became a Senior Legal Advisor for the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

In his suit, Stovell claims he has a very clear recollection of the night he had “consensual sexual relations” with Gloria — in fact, he even remembers apologizing for his sub-par performance. Leicester claims Gloria went back to her hometown in Ohio after they hooked up, but returned several months later to inform him she was pregnant with a boy named LeBron, but she never specifically identified the father. Leicester, a self-proclaimed high school star athlete, says he remembers telling Gloria, “Well, if he’s mine, make sure he plays basketball.” He claims that was the last time he saw Gloria for more than 20 years.

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