The Meaning of Karma

As they travel around the country like an exceptionally tall, five-button suited, emo band — talking about their feelings and crying about perceived injustices — the Miami Heat are making themselves an easy target for people who like to point out their shortcomings.

LeBron James, in particular, has diminished himself to the point that Jiminy Cricket could stab him to death with a shanked toothpick. One week after I warned him about his single use of the “Idiot Defense”, he turned in another bravura performance of Scaredy Cat: The Musical.

To recap: the lowly Cleveland Cavaliers had just finished getting walloped in a record-setting beatdown and James went to his old standby, Twitter, to both gloat and revel in the team’s misfortune. Imagine that: in James’ eyes, his former teammates — whose crime is being stuck in Cleveland — and their fans — whose lives have taken an even greater turn for the worse (if that’s possible) — deserved to be mocked and ridiculed because James was angry at the team’s owner.

Of course, as has been his pattern, the next day James duhhed his way through another denial, in front of the media, mistaking eye contact for the truth. But this time, he rocked a variation on the Krusty the Klown defense: “I didn’t do it.” (“It wasn’t even a comment from me, it was someone who sent it to me and I sent it out,” said James.)

I mean, really, man? Are we really to believe that you, out of the goodness of your own heart and on behalf of an interested third party, agreed to deliver an unprompted, unattributed, devastating comment that you had to know would be hurtful? That, when you heard your cruel, dickish friend bemoaning the fact that he was unable to project his attack to the masses, you turned to him and said something to the effect of, “I got this”? Who are you, Cyrano de Bergerac’s dipshit accomplice?

Shortly thereafter, God, with His/Her/Its free hand, had the last word on the subject, explaining to James the true meaning of the word “karma”: Chris Bosh, aka the third guy, aka the guy who will be eating pizza in his living room while watching the All-Star Game on his flat-screen TV, was felled by the injury bug, hurting his ankle in a game against the Chicago Bulls, who play an alternately inspired and harebrained version of basketball. And what did he do afterward? Why, what any normal well adjusted Miami Heat player circa 2011 would: point fingers. Lots of fingers.

Perhaps Bosh’s opponent Ömer Asik didn’t get the memo that his goal is to put the ankles of opponents ahead of his desire to win and ability to feed his own family. Obviously, Bosh’s punkstravaganza moved was mocked and ridiculed by men with backward baseball caps and, now, by me. But it also seemed to herald a new portion of the season when injuries have become a front-burner problem for the Heat (see what I did there?).

Even after a recent three-game slide they are still winning games like crazy, but the feeling is starting to filter in to the NBA locker rooms (and, like, my living room) that once the playoffs start, the games will be won, not by players 1 through 3, but players, 6 through 9. And on the Heat those guys are…wait a minute, who are those guys again?

If that’s not karma, I don’t know what is.

Tony Gervino is a New York City-based editor and writer obsessed with honing his bio to make him sound quirky. He can also be found here.

Photo by Bridget Samuels, from Flickr.