LeBron James Cattily Responds To Lance Stephenson's Choke Gesture

Here's an example of that silly 24-hour news cycle we were chatting about earlier. Lance Stephenson made a choking gesture the other night as LeBron missed some free throws and now it's a federal case. Stephenson actually felt the need to apologize for the performance and has vowed to keep all future trash talk respectful. This is stupid.

LeBron James has been forced to answer questions about the gesture. He (clearly lying) has maintained he hasn't been watching television and was not aware of the gesture. He finally reached the tipping point last night and responded in such a catty way that it should remind us: this is stupid.

"Lance Stephenson? You want a quote about Lance Stephenson?" James said after practice. "I'm not even going to give him the time. Knock it off."

The grand experiment is falling apart as Miami ties the tourniquet this afternoon against a Pacers team that could not care less about the big three and the storyline is some dude who fake-choked himself. There are a million quotes flying around from (at least somewhat) educated individuals saying out loud that miming the inability to breathe due to some foreign obstruction is "wrong," "a distraction," "disrespectful" and not something teams with "class" and "dignity" "condone." To those covering sports, "Distractions" is like the commerce clause for legislators. through it all things are possible.

The constant coverage is definitely an issue, but the problem isn't that it's constant. It's just constantly stupid. And, it always gets pinned on the consumer. "This is what people want to hear about" they say. "If they didn't eat it up, we wouldn't show it." It's clearly more complicated than that, though. There is a bit of a chicken or the egg conundrum for sure, but this much is true: we are like animals. Put something, anything, in front of us and we will eat it. That does not mean, however, we want it for any other reason than it is already there in front of us.

Stop feeding people silly stuff like a guy pretending to choke himself and wait for the complaints to come in. I promise they won't. Because this. Is. Stupid.

Image via Sportsgrid Stephenson sorry for choking taunt [SI; AP]