LeBron James is hopping

(This is the song, for those among you 12 and under.)

We’re sitting here watching USA-Italy, and avoiding all mention of the result online so far.

As such, we’re forced to browse (in terms of sports) only stuff we saved last night, such as ESPN’s Tuesday Morning Quarterback, who is inexplicably discussing last season’s NBA playoffs.

We’re not saying the guy has no right to do so, it’s just odd that he’d do it right when there’s literally endless NFL news and predictions to analyze.

Anyway, he takes LeBron’s signature move to task.

On a hop-through, the player drives the lane, jumps into the air, comes down and stops for an instant, then takes more steps and launches a shot. It’s both traveling and up-and-down (which is a form of traveling) on the same play, and officials aren’t calling it either.

Nobody hops like LeBron James, and his success is one reason other players are imitating the move. Watch tape of any James performance; half a dozen of his shots per game come at the end of a hopping move on which he has both traveled and committed an up-and-down violation. TMQ attended a Cavs-Whizzies playoff contest this spring, and was struck by two things about James. First, he almost always took possession of the ball outside the opponent’s three-point arc. Michael Jordan came off picks and caught the ball close to the basket. James can’t come off picks because Cleveland does not run picks, or any other kind of play — James just stands outside the arc and someone hands him the ball, then he goes one-on-one. The second thing that struck me about James’ performance was the sheer number of times he went down the lane, traveled, jumped into the air, came back down, then jumped again without being called for anything.

First of all, that’s a hefty sized paragraph.

Secondly, we’re obviously with him on CLE not running any picks or anything else for LeBron, but let us add this on the hop-through. Yeah? So? It’s cool and they let him do it – go drool on Brett Favre.

We’d actually think a football guy would like it, since LBJ often tucks the ball in like a running back when he does this in the lane.

Anyway, in retaliation, here are our NFL predictions:

1) The Browns will open 1-3, at which point we’ll stop paying attention to the NFL. However, that Week 1 victory over whoever they’re playing will have us convinced they’re going to the Super Bowl for six, sweet, sweet days.

2) The Patriots will win it all, and for six sweet, sweet days nobody in Boston will complain about anything. Then they’ll go back to being all “owe is me” as quickly as possible.

3) It’ll be at least six sweet, sweet months until we mention the NFL again, unless item #1 goes differently…which it won’t.

(NOTE: To the a-hole who just IM’d us the final score of ITA-USA (don’t click if you don’t want to know), if we can track down your ip, you’ll never read this site again. (At least from your home computer…or work one. Whichever one you just angered us from.

And Nenad, if it was you…lame, dude. We apologized about Stacy. She doesn’t even like you, anyway.))