In case your goggles have been obscured by visions of Jeremy Lin, you should know that LeBron is currently having a season that can only be described as monstrous. It’s not only been the most dominant season of his career, it’s been the most dominant season of ANY player’s career. Look.
This seems like a good time to tell you that LeBron and I are in the midst of a pretty fierce competition. It’s not one he’s aware of, maybe, but I assure you, it is a competition and it is fierce.
It started with the fact that LeBron and I have a lot in common. Other than the small fact that he looks like a cross between The Hulk and a lumberjack and that I look like the type of puney high schooler who carries a scientific calculator in his breast pocket, we are very similar.
We are (weirdly, disturbingly) the same age. We both grew up in Ohio. We both balled at private catholic high schools in Ohio (my version of balling being the more traditional tennis variety). We both have bright futures. Roughly comparable athletic skills. We will both have sons named Maximus. We both made the controversial decision to take our talents Southward in search of beaches, hoes, and world titles.
This is all just fodder for the competition, and the competition is, in part, to see who will have a higher NET worth by the time we die. The “by the time we die” part is important because it means that I either need to (1) save like a mug and hope that he drains his riches on gambling and yachts and Cristal and whatever else rich people spend their money on, or (2) I need to outlive him. The latter, at least, seems feasible given the fervor of folks in Cleveland.
That’s part of it. The other part is that we are trying to out-reproduce each other (or I am trying to out-reproduce him, I should say). If I can’t win more MVP awards or scoring titles than LeBron, then I at least want to populate the Earth with more of my progeny.
And it shouldn’t be that hard to do. It’s called a sperm bank.
Measuring myself against those goals, things are looking pretty bleak. In NET worth, he has me beat by roughly a billion USD. I just pulled the calculator out of my breast pocket and estimated that if he retires at age 35 and then proceeds to never make any money again ever, for me to have any hope of catching up, he needs to spend at a rate of roughly 170,000 Justin Wehrs per day. Either that or make awful investments in something like Adam Morrison. (Ooo, Jordan burn.)
On the reproduction front, there is already a little Maximus James in the world (actually two), and there are sadly no Maximus Wehrs. I am more optimistic that I can catch up on this with the aid of women whose husbands have dysfunctional balls, but there is the very scary possibility that LeBron could be operating his own “sperm bank.” We’ve already been burnt by Wilt. (If you don’t know what I’m talking about, either re: Adam Morrison or re: Wilt, you probably ought to do some Wikipedia-ing.)
Why does this matter to me, you ask? It’s a reasonable question because I have no beef with LeBron and in fact I even like to see him do well. It’s good competition. What really matters to me is legacy. I think my tombstone would be a bit more eye-catching if it had a line saying, "HIS ACCOMPLISHMENTS INCLUDED OUTLIVING, OUTEARNING, AND OUTREPRODUCING HIS FOE, LEBRON FREAKING JAMES."
The best part? It doesn’t have to be true to be written in gravestone.
The culture that is Washington, D.C.
5 hours ago
