This week, Cleveland’s city planning commission denied permission for Nike to replace the giant 10 story Lebron James banner across the street from Quicken Loans arena with this new one…

…for obvious reasons.

Commission member Norman Krumholz called James’ image on the mural “terribly negative.”

James’ grim visage and hardened stance play to a stereotype of young, urban black men as menacing and aggressive, a city design-review official said Thursday.

Stanley Miller, executive director of the Cleveland NAACP, said in an interview Friday that the James mural bothered him.

“The media depict [African-Americans] in a more aggressive, forceful, athletic — combative, if you will — position,” Miller said. “The biggest challenge I have with boys is to build their understanding that there’s more to achieve than being a football player, basketball player or rap star.”

Nike isn’t the only major company leaping across the line of racial sensitivity in Cleveland regarding Lebron James. In fact, this might be the image that captures the reality most accurately.

Like most professional sports teams, the Cleveland Cavaliers broadcast their games on a Clear Channel-owned AM radio station, WTAM 1100, that also airs Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh. It’s time for Lebron James to address that. Not because he’s a Barack Obama endorser. Not because he’s a star. But because Lebron’s a young black man who unquestionably has the power to stop it.

Most of us are fully aware of the racial hate speech that both Beck and Limbaugh spew on a daily basis. Limbaugh called the NBA “the Thug Basketball Association”

Call it the TBA, the Thug Basketball Association … They’re going in to watch the Crips and the Bloods

…Limbaugh’s called basketball “the favorite sport of gangs.”

Midnight basketball — I mean, we’ve done it all. We’ve taken the favorite sport of gangs, and we put it at midnight to get them on the basketball court.

…said that Barack Obama’s America is a place where…

You put your kids on a school bus you expect safety but in Obama’s America the white kids now get beat up with the black kids cheering ‘yeah, right on, right on, right on.’

…and we all know that Beck called Lebron James-endorsed Barack Obama a “racist” with a “deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture.”

I took it upon myself to find out how the Cavs, Lebron, and Shaquille O’Neal feel about sharing airtime and revenue streams with this hate speech, in an article last month in Cleveland’s newest alt weekly, The Indpendent.

Beck and Limbaugh may not be on the Cavs roster this coming season, but they are certainly on the same team – WTAM’s. The Browns, Indians, and Cavs are a golden goose for WTAM. All three professional franchises make WTAM their radio home. And as long as anyone can remember, WTAM has also been the home of conservative talk radio in Cleveland. Joining the six hours of Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh every day are an array of Cleveland conservative ditto heads.

If the Cavs ever cared about being sandwiched into the nooks between Beck, Limbaugh, and their ilk, it doesn’t show. Both Beck and Limbaugh advertise during Cavs games on WTAM, their voices mixing with Joe Tait’s as Tait brings WTAM out of commercial and back to the game. WTAM milks their golden geese one after the other, the revenue streams almost indistinguishable.

No one from the Cavs, WTAM, the Lebron James camp, or Shaq’s, has commented, nor have they made Lebron or Shaq aware of the issue.

It’s hard to see how Lebron, Shaq, and the Cavs can avoid addressing this for the entire 2009-2010 season. Beck and Limbaugh have proven they are willing to plumb the depths of the long sleeping cesspool of racial hate speech for their own enrichment… Meanwhile, Lebron and Shaq, two very powerful African Americans, each with the influence and support to affect change at WTAM, sit quietly on the sidelines.

The silence indicates the enormity of the stakes. What Lebron wants, Lebron gets. Lebron wanted Shaq - got him. Lebron wanted a new practice facility, it was built. Everyone on earth knows that if Lebron says the word, the Cavs leave WTAM the very next minute. And if that happens, every NBA team on an AM radio station sharing air with Rush and Beck will have the same problem. Which likely explains how freaked out Cavs spokesman Tad Carper was when he called me on the phone, from a game, in a panic.

Before I could even ask a question, Tad launched into what I can only describe as a rant, all of which Tad wanted off the record. He more than once claimed I was trying to “blackmail” the Cavs. Tad wondered if the Cavs left WTAM, when would someone else say something objectionable? Where does it end, Tad begged? You’re making us a pawn in your agenda, Tad howled. People listen to those two, they’re popular, Tad cried. I thought Tad might be a Dittohead.

I’m guessing that both Lebron and Shaq would step up in a heartbeat, but neither probably has any idea how dangerous, incendiary, inciting to violence, and racist the airtime has become on the Cavs radio home. The Cavs simply should not broadcast their games on that air and should not share revenue streams with WTAM, unless WTAM cleans up the air. And if Lebron, or Shaq, says the word, WTAM’s air gets cleaned up, or the Cavs are gone. Period.

So we need to make Lebron and Shaq aware of the hate speech they share airtime with.

I’d like to ask this community to help put the pressure on the Cavs to do the right thing, and end the broadcast of their games on WTAM. This is a tough situation for this hope-filled Cavs fan, but it’s time. Even this Friday night, on my way home from filming Palinbots in Columbus, I had to listen to Glenn Beck’s voice of hate advertising his show on a Cavs broadcast while I was stuck in the car.

It’s not about a difference of opinion. It’s about hate. WTAM’s blowhards can be as wingnutty as they want, and I wouldn’t care that Lebron shared their airtime. A line, however, has been demonstratively crossed, into hate speech.

My hometown hero, Lebron James, who grew up in an inner-city neighborhood that suffers to this day because of this level of hate, doesn’t belong associated with it. Ever. Enough is enough.

So here’s the email address for Lebron’s publicity agent, Keith Estabrook.

keith@estabrookgroup.com

Here’s a list of emails for the Cavs, including owner Dan Gilbert.

dangilbert@quickenloans.com
lkomoroski@cavs.com
gnarain@cavs.com
AMercado@cavs.com
 TCarper@cavs.com

Here’s Cindy Hamilton, Nike spokesperson.

cindy.hamilton@nike.com

Here’s the Cleveland NAACP email.

information@clevelandnaacp.org

And here’s a list of emails for WTAM and Clear Channel, also known as the “no chance, but more pressure is good pressure” list.

news@wtam.com
thebigone@wtam.com
georgeallen@clearchannel.com
michellehurst@clearchannel.com
sharonmoses@clearchannel.com
 rewards@wtam.com

If you feel the same way I do, please email them all this image of Lebron, Beck, and Limbaugh, and ask the Cavs to stop airing their games on a radio station that airs racial hate speech. If your favorite team shares air time with Rush & Beck, post their email contact info in this diary, and hit them up, too.

It’s wrong. And it should stop.

I did not know how much my latest piece in the Independent would bother Dan Gilbert, or his Cavs spokesperson Tad Carper.  Last week, I found out in great detail just how much it does bother them.

The Cleveland Cavaliers share a radio home, WTAM 1100 AM, with Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, an uncomfortable situation I’ve been noting as increasingly problematic for a while now.  I’ve been trying to get comment from the Cavs on this for about a month.  Last week, Dan Gilbert, the Cavs owner, referred my editor at The Independent, James Renner, to Cavs VP of Communications, Tad Carper.  James sent Tad my phone number.

I watched James email Carper my phone number from the table at Civilization Coffee House, got up to walk home along Lincoln Park, and a few minutes later, my phone rang.  It was Tad Carper.  Hey, how are you? I said.  Didn’t expect to hear from you that quickly!

Before I could even ask a question, Tad launched into what I can only describe as a rant, all of which Tad wanted off the record.  He more than once claimed I was trying to “blackmail” the Cavs.  Tad wondered if the Cavs left WTAM, when would someone else say something objectionable?  Where does it end, Tad begged?  You’re making us a pawn in your agenda, Tad howled.  People listen to those two, they’re popular, Tad cried.  I thought Tad might be a Dittohead.

So I interrupted Tad’s rant, repeatedly, to say that all I wanted was comment from both the Cavs and Lebron James.  If they didn’t want to comment, fine.  But why, I asked, are you wasting my time with this if the Cavs, or Lebron, or Dan Gilbert, don’t have comment?

During this entire exchange, I was pacing in Lincoln Park, planning to return to Civilization knowing that James, my editor, would want to know about this call.  My phone started beeping, warning me that the battery was about to die.  That’s how long this rant went on.  I interrupted the rant again to warn Tad my phone would turn off, nothing personal, call ya back.  Phone turned off, mid rant.  Glad that’s over, I thought.

So I walked back to James to tell him the whole thing, after which I walked back to my apartment, which takes about 20 minutes.  In all, it took me about 45 minutes to get my phone plugged in and turned on again.  The phone immediately rang when I turned it back on - it was Tad. Which means Tad Carper must have been hitting redial quite regularly during those 45 minutes.

Tad’s tone had changed dramatically, and he promised me a statement on the record, from the Cavs, by the end of the day Monday.  Tad said they’d talk to WTAM, they’re good people, long relationship, blah blah blah, and they’d get back to me.  Weekend came, weekend went.  I emailed Tad asking for the statement for this blog post, which I put off at Tad’s request.  Monday night, Tad emailed me to say they’d have no comment.  Clever.

Perhaps Dan Gilbert and his spokesperson Tad Carper are nervous about making any sort of statement on why their NBA basketball team airs their games on a radio station that daily airs open incitement to racial hate, even advertises the shows that air that hate during their basketball games - one week before Ohio voters decide whether or not to write Dan Gilbert’s casino proposal into the Ohio constitution.  That’s understandable.  Maybe they can skate on this until election day next week, as they clearly want to.

But neither me, nor James Renner, are “blackmailing” anybody.  I am a Cavs fan’s Cavs fan.   And if this situation is so uncomfortable as to get the Cavs spokesperson to call it “blackmail”, unfortunately, I don’t think the passing of next week”s election is going to resolve whatever bothered Tad Carper and Dan Gilbert to the point of playing this ridiculous game all weekend with some dude who’s got a blog and a column in an alt weekly.

Not by a long shot.

Welcome to the NBA’s new Cold War, and like all good versus evil stories, there really are only two giants.  The rest of the NBA watches in horror at the mutually assured destruction of their own title hopes.

The champagne wasn’t even wiped off the NBA trophy the Cavs never got a shot at lifting before the Cavs made the move they knew they had to make since February.  Get Shaq.  Get him now.  This is akin to going from one H-bomb to a multiple warhead intercontinental ballistic missile, and several nuclear submarines equipped with same.

The Lakers have responded the only way they could, by going after the one person in the NBA who has proven he can at least harrass Lebron James - Ron Artest.  Team killer?  No matter.  Bad locker room influence.  No matter.  Artest can keep up with Lebron.  Can’t guard him, mind you!  But can irritate him.

Then, the Cavs made a go at the Lakers themselves, going after Trevor Ariza as he was on his way out the door to Houston.  Counter intelligence.  Spy vs. spy.  Only thing missing was a femme fatale holding a martini glass whispering sweet nothings in Russian across a smoky cavern bar in Stalingrad.  That didn’t quite work out, and on the way out of that deal, Ariza threw a little stink bomb back at Lebron, claiming he’d promised to stay in Cleveland on the QT.

Meanwhile, this summer’s NBA trade and free agent chaos has made all of the other pretenders to the crown worse, not better.  After getting to the finals thanks to an underperforming Cavs, and a Magic team playing way above their heads, the Orlando Magic appear to have lost their minds.  Wave good bye to Hedo Turkoglu and Rafer Alston, and say hello to Vince Carter?  Um…..WHAT?  The Celtics think they can get another ring out of Rasheed Wallace?  Please.  The Rockets worst nightmare may be coming true, as Yao Ming’s foot appears hopelessly injured.

Only two teams have really improved in this offseason.  You know who they are.

The Lakers.  And the Cavs.

The Lakers appear to have decided that the only thing standing between Kobe and more rings is Lebron James.  It’s as if the Lakers didn’t even play Orlando in the Finals - yeah, whatever.   As soon as Shaq made it official, the arms race was on.

We’d better get used to this.  Next summer, after an epic NBA Finals in which I am quite certain Lebron and Shaq will stand astride the sports world like Greek gods holding that trophy, the ensuing free agent spree is going to be like Kruschev and Kennedy, Reagan and Brezhnev.  Total war between the Lakers and the Cavs.

This is gonna so fucking awesome.

Once again, Danny Ferry pulls a rabbit out of a hat.  We lose Ben Wallace & Sasha Pavlovic in the trade, which isn’t losing much.  Wallace has appeared done for a while - even in the playoffs, with loads of rest, Wallace often couldn’t even jump high enough to dunk the ball.  As for Sasha - no one has ever needed a change of scenery more than Sasha.  He looked uninterested, lost, his head was never in the game.  Perhaps in Phoenix, Sasha can get back to being a productive player, but as of now, he’s a big fat nothing.

And if you told me at any time in the last season that we could get rid of two of our least productive players, and get SHAQ, I’d have laughed in your face.  Well, we just did it.  Which begs the question - is Shaq done, too?

Not by a long shot.  Shaq at half strength is a dominant force, even if all he does is defend and rebound.  But Shaq is still capable of putting up 30 points and 20 rebounds on any given night.  Teamed with Lebron, Shaq is going to have plenty of room to roam.

And Shaq can pass - adding another passer to the Cavs will make them look like a precision Platonic Form of Basketball.

Book the Finals.