The Idiot Defense

I have a friend who, several years ago, was accused of a fairly serious, non-violent (or even icky, for that matter) crime. It was a bad situation, or would have been so had he been convicted. Like, orange-jumpsuit bad. Smartly, he’d hired a hotshot criminal defense attorney who hatched a plan to get my friend off using what I like to call the “Idiot Defense.”

It consisted of the lawyer standing in front of the judge and, in effect, saying, “My client is an idiot. He behaved in a certain manner that may seem to be counter to coherent, rational thought because his brain doesn’t operate like the rest of us. He’s slow and thought he was doing the right thing.”

Needless to say, with such a heartfelt “confession” my friend (who is actually quite intelligent) was exonerated and, thankfully has learned his lesson, which is good because you only get to pull the Idiot Card one time in your life. And, if you are reading this, LeBron James, you just used yours.

As the Year of the Akron Snake drew to a close, James conducted another of his charming fireside chats where he spoke about how, as an athlete (and therefore eminently qualified to ruminate on matters of business and others’ livelihoods) the NBA would be far better if there were fewer teams.

As you can see, there’s no wiggle room in his words. No contextual argument to claim misquoting. James wasn’t lured down a path by cagey reporters, but actually wondered aloud about which players could move where in his new version of the NBA, and how joyous life would be if, for example, one of the teams that he pretended had a chance to sign him would actually disappear forever, like the Cavaliers’ playoff hopes.

Naturally, the news went over pretty poorly with the rest of the league’s players, owners and the NBA Player’s Association. (Not to mention the NBA Players Posse Association, which took the news like a shot to the throat.) Even the reedy, thin-skinned Nets coach Avery Johnson took issue and, said what a lot of people thought: mind your own damn business, LeBron. “Oh, snap!” is right.

James quickly backpedaled, but in doing so, uttered is the single greatest argument for a minimum age restriction in the NBA. He also made me think of my friend’s tongue-biting day in court.

“That’s crazy,” LeBron said, “because I had no idea what the word ‘contraction’ meant before I saw it on the Internet.”

Heh? I won’t go into the sociological ramifications of a grown person not knowing what the word contraction means. Words are confusing. I didn’t know what the word élan meant until I read it 4,000 times in Vanity Fair and looked it up.

But a professional athlete advocating an action that will knowingly put some of his dap friends out of work? Unheard of. Which is why James, like the fantastic Mr. Fox, did what he does best: continued digging furiously.

“I never even mentioned that,” he said. “That word never even came out of my mouth. I was just saying how the league was back in the ’80s and how it could be good again. I never said, ‘Let’s take some of the teams out.’”

I know what you’re thinking and I agree. That’s exactly what he said and what he meant. Because the word “contraction” was not available in his vocabulary quiver, it doesn’t mean that James didn’t know the power of his words.

Obviously, in granting him his free pass, the sports media nevertheless had some fun at his expense. Even to folks like me who have already seen athletes bend themselves into verbal pretzels for years, often within the same sentence, this maneuver was Béla Károlyi amazing. But it was not altogether unexpected.

The past six months of LeBron James life have been a jumble of contradictions: he’s a prodigiously talented athlete, but a relatively pedestrian human being. He’s best player in the NBA, but is happy playing second banana to its sixth best (I counted.)

It’s hard to imagine Michael Jordan taking such a stand against his fellow players — he was always a union man — but had he done so, it is impossible to think of him denying his actions. Or, you know, using the “Idiot Defense.”

But don’t quote me on that.

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 Keith Allison, from Flickr.