Schadenfreude roundup: Bleacher Report on LeBron James’ failure

In all the excitement of watching the Dallas Mavericks win the NBA title, reading about them celebrating with a $90,000 giant bottle of champagne, and learning what the word “schadenfreude” means, you might have missed some of Bleacher Report’s coverage of the decline and fall of LeBron James’ championship hopes.

So here’s a little roundup.

Things really got cooking after LeBron and the Miami Heat’s disastrous Game 4. Sam Westmoreland asked — with the series tied 2-2 — “Will LeBron James Always Choke Away Championship Hopes?”

Writing the same day, Michael Cahill offered an answer, writing that “LeBron Will Never Be Michael Jordan.”

Before the Mavs put the series away on Sunday, Nathan Tanner compared and contrasted James and Dirk Nowitzki, making the interesting and maybe counterintuitive point that LeBron represents modern America and the German Nowitzki represents “Old America.”

And after the bitter end for the Heat, Bryan Toporek wrote that James and his teammates have only themselves to blame for being the team that lost the Finals because, as Chris Bosh admitted, the Mavericks wanted it more.

Finally, here’s a MediaBistro story about how the Heat’s loss presented a happy ending to Esquire writer Scott Raab’s upcoming book about LeBron, “The Whore of Akron.”

Raab, who is as bitter about James’ departure as any of his fellow Clevelanders, wrote a guest column for Bleacher Report about witnessing the Heat’s loss to the Cavaliers in Cleveland in March. His book is due this fall.