Presuming you’ve seen LeBron’s (lame) “What Should I Do?” ad, check out the following fan-made mash-up of that commercial and an older Jordan ad.

Ouch.

I mentioned on Twitter that I thought LeBron’s new Nike ad came off kind of dickish, and it looks like I’m not the only one. The city of Cleveland responds:

LeBron and the Miami Heat visit the Cavs on December 2nd. It will be an interesting scene, for sure.

LeBron James and his camp have long held the ‘no regrets’ stance with regard to “The Decision,” which raised $3 million for charity but was a disaster for LeBron’s image around the country. But finally, LeBron has admitted that there was room for improvement, per ESPN…

“If I had to go back on it, I probably would do it a little bit different,” James said. “But I’m happy with the decision I made. There’s always going to be a misunderstanding. I don’t know what I would [have done], but I definitely would have changed it.”

Well, it’s not the mea culpa that so many of us are looking for, but it’s something. It would go a long way to repair his relationship if he’d just release a statement along these lines:

I want to apologize to all my fans in Cleveland for the way that I announced my decision this summer. I got caught up in the moment and thought it was a good idea to capitalize on all the attention surrounding my decision by producing a special and raising a lot of money for charity. But I now realize that it was a mistake to make such a public spectacle out of my situation and that it made my decision that much more painful for my fans in Cleveland.

Wouldn’t that repair most of the damage that he’s done to his image?

LeBron James claims he wasn’t telling his (former) fans in Cleveland to “get over it,” but it sure sounds like he did:

“If I was a fan and I was on the outside looking in, I could be upset a little bit if one of my favorite players left,” James said. “Or if I felt like he betrayed us or whatever the case may be. But you have to get over it.”

“Sports are very emotional and fans are very emotional,” James said. “At times they really believe you may be related to them you and you sleep in their house. When you do something wrong and you leave their house they can become very emotional. I’ve understood that over the years. But at the same time, you have to understand you have to do what is best yourself.”

I’m not sure what the whole “you sleep in their house” bit is about — it sounds like one of those philosophical LeBron thoughts that went awry — but no one in Cleveland is going to be comforted by the rest of these remarks, no matter how nicely ESPN (headline reads: “LeBron sympathetic to fans”) wants to put them.

LeBron later tweeted:

Let’s clear this up! I never said to the Cavs fans to “get over it”. I’ve never and will never say anything bad about them. 7 years of joy!

I’ll give him this — he didn’t say “those fans should get over it,” but he did imply that fans in general have to “get over it” when an athlete does something to anger them. In a time where no one is going to be parsing words in his defense, this is not going to go over well in Cleveland. Especially considering that the front-running LeBron (who grew up as a fan of Jordan’s Bulls, the Cowboys and the Yankees) simply can’t relate to Cavs fans who feel that their local hero stabbed them in the back.

And there’s still no acknowledgment that “The Decision” was a colossal mistake, image-wise. He and his camp are still clinging to the idea that raising some money for charity offsets whatever pain he put Cavs fans through on his monumental ego trip/public break up.

This is going to be an interesting season, for sure.

GQ interviewed LeBron James before and after “The Decision,” and is publishing a story in the September issue chronicling those pressure-packed days surrounding that widely-panned ESPN special.

Moehringer had unprecedented inside access: a pair of face-to-face meetings shortly before The Decision and a follow-up phone call six days after the fact. During that postmortem interview, when Moehringer asked James what he’d change if he had a do-over, James replied, “Nothing at all.” Bottom line: LeBron doesn’t really care how it went down.

James on Cavs owner Dan Gilbert: “I don’t think he ever cared about LeBron. My mother always told me: ‘You will see the light of people when they hit adversity. You’ll get a good sense of their character.’ Me and my family have seen the character of that man.” He went on to say that Gilbert’s post-Decision screed “made me feel more comfortable that I made the right decision.”

Wow, he wouldn’t change a thing about “The Decision”? This guy really is living on another planet. How could someone be so pigheaded as to not admit that the hour-long special was a bad idea?

And while I agree with the sentiment about Dan Gilbert’s character, by preceding his wise little anecdote about his mother with a reference to himself in the third person, he loses all credibility.

The author of the piece, J.R. Moehringer, answered a few of TrueHoop’s questions. One thing he said was especially interesting:

…but it seems to me that [James] has one formula for success in his life and that comes out of his high school experience.

This really comes across when you watch the “More Than a Game” documentary about LeBron and the Akron Fab Five. He thrives, he’s happiest, he does his best when he is surrounded by friends. He just didn’t feel like that was happening in Cleveland. It seems pretty clear that Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh aren’t just the best talent he can surround himself with, but they’re a combination of talent and friends. He’s looking for camaraderie. That’s the formula that has worked for him — and the only one that has worked for him. And that comes out of his early childhood when he was completely alone in the apartment he shared with his mother, not knowing his father, not knowing when or if she’d come home. It seems to me these were formative scarring moments that created this need for constant intimate contact. It came across to me watching the documentary. It came across to me reading Buzz’s book. And it especially came across to me when he was introduced to the fans in Miami with Wade and Bosh by his side. He’s not just looking to win. He’s also looking to be happy, and he’s only happy when he’s surrounded by people he cares for and trusts. He’s at his best when he has his brothers in arms around him and he’s at his worst when he’s completely alone.

This puts his decision into a different context, especially when those rumors about Delonte West are thrown into the mix.