LeBron James doesn't owe you anything. (AchimH, Wikimedia Commons)

Just stop.

Enough of the “I hate LeBron James”; enough of the “he only went to Miami because he never could have won on his own.” Enough of the trying to minimize what has the potential to be the arguably the best two-year run by a basketball player ever - depending on how tonight goes. LeBron James has won four MVP awards, something only Kareem, Wilt, Bill Russell and Jordan have done, every one of whom is a top ten player of all time. He has two Olympic gold medals, a finals MVP and plays tonight for his second, along with his second ring. Stop telling me he isn’t clutch, stop telling me he chokes down the stretch - stop. Most of all, though? Stop holding LeBron James to a standard you couldn’t meet yourself if you lived a million years.

Yes, LeBron James made a mistake in how he announced he was leaving the Cleveland Cavaliers for Miami. He made the mistake of arrogance. By every account he has spent the last three years trying to move on from that. How many of us have made mistakes out of arrogance? If you can say you haven’t, please click the link at the bottom of this column and send me an email, because I’m dying to know your secrets. Our mistakes just happen to appear smaller because there are exponentially fewer people concerned with what we do. What I wouldn’t give for everyone who rips another human being, like people do LeBron, to spend one day walking around facing the kind of scrutiny about their most arrogant moment that this man has lived with for three years. What I wouldn’t give for LeBron James to be allowed to come into your place of work and critique you every time you make a mistake. I understand the point that as an athlete he has signed up for this type of expectation and subsequent criticism, but this is not about the criticism of an athlete, it is about the way we seem to have forgotten that that athlete happens to be a human being as well.

“But Calum, he brought this on himself.” And you didn’t do the same with your mistakes? That’s why they are called your mistakes. “He’s an a**hole” (yes, these are all quotes I've had texted or told to me since game six ended tuesday night). Oh, really? Because by all accounts he’s the best teammate in the league. There’s a reason pregame in Cleveland used to look like this. Before you start throwing names around, please evaluate why you’re rooting for the San Antonio Spurs tonight. Why you’ve been rooting for every team to play against Miami in these playoffs. Unless you’re the worst kind of sports fan, the kind who says things like “yeah, they’re my fifth favorite team,” you have simply been rooting for LeBron James (and the Miami Heat) to fail. 

You have actively been reveling in every time another human being struggles to live up to a standard by which we have never judged any other athlete, a standard by which we don’t judge any other human being no matter their walk of life. The odds are that you’re not rooting for the San Antonio Spurs tonight because you want the Spurs to win; it is because you want Miami to lose. Somehow, you have convinced yourself that by going to Miami LeBron James made it ok for you to not be happy with the success of one organization, but to also need a grown man who is better at what he does than 99.99 percent of us will ever be at anything, to fail miserably in the process. So before you make that “he’s an a**hole” claim again, take a second to think about what it really says about you to want to see others fail on a national stage.

Whether or not the Miami Heat wins tonight (and they will), it will primarily be seen as LeBron James winning or losing; the team will be secondary. Whether or not the Miami Heat wins, LeBron James doesn’t owe you anything. He doesn’t owe you an apology, he doesn’t owe you tears, he doesn’t owe you getting on his knees and begging for your forgiveness. Do you know who the second best player on the 2007 Cleveland Cavaliers, a team that LeBron single handedly took to the finals, was? I hope you do, because I don’t. Please look at this roster and tell me if you find anyone else who deserves to have the word "best" used next to their name, even with the prefix “second.” Do you know who the second best player on Michael Jordan’s first championship team was? An admittedly young Scottie Pippen who just happens to be one of the 25 best players in NBA history. Stop claiming LeBron went to Miami because he could never measure up to Jordan. Newsflash: Jordan couldn’t measure up to the Jordan you’ve built up in your mind. 

LeBron James made a decision in the summer of 2010 to play for the Miami Heat. In other words, in the summer of 2010 LeBron James decided to move out of Cleveland (a city he revitalized by bringing more people than ever before to restaurants and sports bars to watch his greatness, so save me the “he owed the people of Cleveland a title” BS) to go to a city that gets 249 days of sun a year, in a state which has no income tax, and, oh yeah, two of his best friends live there, too. Should he have made his decision in the way he did? Obviously not, but unless you can tell me you have never made a mistake driven by arrogance, I go back to how I started this column… just stop.

LeBron James doesn’t owe us anything. As sports fans, we should be appreciating the fact that some day we’ll be able to tell our kids that we watched LeBron James play the same way my dad tells me he watched Michael Jordan play. All men are fallible and all men make mistakes. So before you finish crucifying the man for a mistake he made three years ago, realize that you love LeBron James as much as any of his biggest supporters - you just love to hate him; realize that your dislike of LeBron James says more about you than it ever will him…and then remember that there’s a reason his nickname is The King, not The Messiah.

Reach Columnist Calum Hayes here; follow him here.