When a player is so synonymous with one city/franchise for his entire career, returning to his former home arena sporting an enemy jersey is bound to be a highly-charged situation for all parties. But enough about Zydrunas Ilgauskas’ first game in Cleveland since joining the Heat, much of the sporting sphere is abuzz Thursday over Cavs owner Dan Gilbert dropping an alleged $200K (and counting) in legal fees to pursue a tampering charge against Miami over their acquisition of LeBron James. Fanhouse’s Surya Fernandez asked Ilgauskas (above, left) his opinion of such machinations, and LeBron’s longtime teammate was scathing in his reply ;
“That’s chasing ghosts right there,” he told FanHouse while shaking his head. “Let bygones be bygones. There are more important things in life: people dying from cancer every day, kids dying every day, people having HIV, people fighting wars. There are more important things than the Miami Heat going back to Cleveland.
“Let’s put life in perspective, it’s just a basketball game.”
Just a game, mind you, that has earned the Lithuanian C over $125 million in his professional career. Without question, there are more important things than Dan Gilbert’s pissing match with LeBron, there might even be more important things than the blow James delivered to a city that had so much hope invested in him. But if we were to take Ilgauskas’ advice and truly put things in perspective, what sort of market value do you suppose would be applied to a person with his unique skill-set? He’d certainly be very adept at fetching items from very tall shelves in stores.