Well it finally happened for Lebron "King" James. Last night the NBA MVP received his much anticipated ring.

And what a ring!! Check this thing out. The ring took about five weeks to make. It contains 219 diamonds, three custom onyx stones and weighs in at 115 grams. I guess all of his drama can be finished now, right?

photo from US Wordpress & http://www.yahoo.com

I'm glad that somebody at ESPN finally wrote this, but it is something I have been saying for the last few years. ESPN columnist Rick Reilly wrote the article: NBA no longer Fan-tastic. Here's why: the players not only think they run the league, they really do run the league. They collude and discuss how to create "super power" teams to go beat up on the lesser teams. Look at what LeBron James, Dwayne Wade, and Chris Bosh did. Look at how Carmello Anthony, Amare Stoudemire, and Chris Paul all met up at a wedding during the last offseason and talked about winning championships together in New York. Now what's worse is these guys whine enough and then they get their way.

Former Utah guard Derron Williams is no exception. This mentality that the players are bigger than the game, their teams, and their coaching staff is really getting old. What happened to the idea that it is a privilege to play professional sports? One, these guys are already paid unreasonable amounts of money and two, they play a game for a living. So now, they get to whine about where they play and what style the coached instill? Reilly points out that these guys want to go play in the limelight in what they deem as cool cosmopolitan cities - or as Reilly put it exactly, "cities with a direct flight to Paris." I actually found that there is a direct to Paris from Salt Lake City, but you get the picture, that's not going to bring the super star players to the Jazz.

The reality is - like Reilly said, don't expect teams like the Denver Nuggets to be winning anything anytime soon. That goes for the Jazz, Sacramento, Portland, Oklahoma City, and on and on. If you are not in the apex of nightclub life cities, don't expect good players to want to play for your team. And why would they, the league has created this monster where players can collude and form super powers. Sure, we can all look and say San Antonio, a smaller market team, has had a flash of success. But, let's look at something a bit more empirical. Over half of all NBA titles have been won by one of two teams - the Lakers or the Celtics. And in the last 11 years, those two teams have won SIX of them.

In contrast, look at the NFL where teams from small markets win it all. Green Bay, Indianapolis, New Orleans, etc. Teams in those cities would never win an NBA championship. The teams in the NFL clearly have more brand power and it still means something to play for those teams - even if the stadium holds more people than actually live in the town (Green Bay, Wisconsin).

Click here to read Reilly's article.