Talking so much, that is.

A few days ago, LeBron James made news by seeming to advocate contraction in the NBA. His quote was:

"Imagine if you could take Kevin Love off Minnesota and add him to another team and you shrink the [league]," James said Thursday. "Looking at some of the teams that aren't that great, you take Brook Lopez or you take Devin Harris off these teams that aren't that good right now and you add him to a team that could be really good. Not saying let's take New Jersey and let's take Minnesota out of the league. But hey, you guys are not stupid, I'm not stupid, it would be great for the league."

Now, most people took that as an argument in favor of cutting a few teams. The line about not getting rid of New Jersey or Minnesota was received more as "don't take those two specific teams out". One reason it was taken that was is that, if you don't read it that way, then LeBron James's stance would be that there should be some teams in the league that simply don't have any good players left on them. Which would seem pretty stupid.

But just in case you didn't think he was stupid, LeBron cleared it up for you. After the contraction comments became public, there were a number of harsh responses, as one would expect since LeBron's point of view clashes with what the players' union believes and would put about two dozen players out of work. So, of course, LeBron took a page out of the Sarah Palin playbook and blamed the media.

"That's crazy, because I had no idea what the word 'contraction' meant before I saw it on the Internet," James said after the Miami Heat's practice Monday. "I never even mentioned that. 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.' "

Thankfully, there were apparently no follow up questions because if someone asked, "Wait, what do you mean by 'It could be good again'?" then LeBron would have ended up either supporting contraction again or trying to sell the idea that the league would be better if there were just a handful of teams that flat out had no good talent on them.

There's a saying that, "If you don't stand up for something, you'll fall for everything." An offshoot of that is that if you don't stand for something, you'll end up sounding like an idiot. The fact of the matter is that LeBron James was right; the league would be better off with fewer teams. The league is watered down down. It would be better if it was a smaller league like it was in the 80's. He wasn't saying anything that wasn't common sense.
The problem is that LeBron somehow oblivious to the fact that what he was saying would rile so many people up or that it was one of the worst things he could have said as the NBA and Players Union head to a labor standoff. In trying to backtrack, he just ended up by making himself sound even dumber, not just for the childish "I didn't say that." but also because he literally said he was ignorant to the word "contraction" which, as a commenter on ESPN noted, is odd since he has a kid.

But since I'm getting older and need to settle into my old fogie role, I'm going to blame Twitter. The Twitter Generation just doesn't seem to realize that there can be unexpressed thoughts or ideas that you keep to yourself. While I agree with LeBron James's initial stance on contraction, there was NO WAY he should have shared it with a journalist. No matter what he meant, LBJ should have known that journalists were going to spin it to get the biggest headline. LeBron's been in the public eye for almost a decade, you would think he'd know that by now. If not, someone should get him a copy of Bull Durham as a belated Christmas present.

Just as LeLoosh needs to realize that there's more to playing basketball than going out and having fun, there's more to crafting your image and taking care of the public's perception of you than smiling and talking to everyone. In fact, in both cases, that approach will end up to bite you in the ass. I can't say that I feel bad for LeBron because I'm not a fan but I will say that it is getting somewhat pathetic to see him continually misplay his hand and make himself look so foolish.

(And honestly, I can't really preach too much on this one because if I ever became famous, I'm sure there are some things I've posted on this blog that I probably would wish weren't out there on the public record.)