Audio By Carbonatix
Esquire staffer and native Clevelander Scott Raab didn’t ration the venom in his soon-to-be-released anti-LeBron James tome, The Whore of Akron. In an attention-grabbing excerpt published recently, Raab wished a career-ending injury upon the six-foot-eight man-child — and also had choice words for local fans.
A tiny taste: “This is where LeBron James wants to play basketball, in front of sun-dried cretins who must be bribed to act as if they care about the game and the team.”
Turns out the best way to bust through South Florida sports fans’ apathy — and get them to act really cretinous — is to call them cretins.
“I got a lot of, ‘Hey, die in a fire,'” Raab tells Riptide. “I’m not saying I haven’t earned it… But I think that it’s a little strange that people are taking this stuff that seriously.”
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Yes, neighbors, judging from the hate mail Raab forwarded New Times, we might have gone a bit overboard. Here’s one email from a man named Steven: “Are you the reason your parents got divorced? You wish death on LeBron James? Then I wish death on you. I hope your child gets cancer of the eyes and it’s slow and painful.”
Then there was a stern lecture from a fellow named Dominic: “You’re trying to make money off another man’s name? Doesn’t that make you a whore as well?”
This missive, from Taylor, was nice and succinct: “I’m a basketball cretin from Miami. I love going to Heat games so I can display my new Nikes and show up in the second quarter. I was just wondering how I can meet Scott Raab. With his permission, I’d love to punch him in the face some time. K?”
But let nobody tell you that Heat fans are incapable of reason. Raab ended up having a civil email exchange with Taylor, and even the momentarily psychotic Steven apologized after we published his screed online.
“It was 2 a.m. [and] I’d been drinking Johnnie Walker Black for 12 hours, trying to wash away the Hurricanes’ last-second loss to Virginia Tech,” he explained. “My mother is not proud of me, and my girlfriend won’t talk to me till I apologize.”
