LeBron James loves the children.

At least, I think that's the motivation behind "The LeBrons," the basketball superstar's new venture, an animated series that will air 10 episodes on youtube.com/thelebrons.

Just about six minutes long, the show is meant as family entertainment 'designed to provide positive messages to today's youth and young adults.'

Shaped by the multiple characters LeBron played in his Nike commercials, after the obligatory rap theme song, we meet Kid (voiced by Jonathan Wesley), his pal Condor (Jason Weaver), old man Wise, basketball playing Athlete, and cooler-than-cool Business (voiced by LeBron). Apparently, Niecy Nash will voice Gloria, the mother figure on the show.

We have a neat photo gallery online of last night's NBA game between the Miami Heat and the Cleveland Cavaliers.  This was the first game back in Cleveland for LeBron James.  The photos show an irate Cleveland crowd giving the business all game long to James, who, of course, ditched them for Miami in search of a championship ring.

Here are my thoughts:

1.  LeBron James has the right to sell his services to whomever he wants to work for. In the old, old days of major league sports, players had very limited rights to change teams.  Owners took vast advantage of this. It didn't appear to bother fans back then that their heroes were basically getting hosed because the market was outrageously rigged against them.

2.  Having said that, I am reminded of what Jack Nicholson's character, private detective Jake Gittes, in the movie Chinatown, asked the the rich, powerful and dangerous businessman Noah Cross played so sinister by John Huston.  "Why are you doing it? How much better can you eat? What could you buy that you can't already afford?"

In other words, James was already making a pile of money in Cleveland, and stood to continue making a ton of money. 

3. But the reason he went to Miami was sort of for the same reason the Noah Cross character in Chinatown was engineering a vast scheme to steal water from the farmers in order to benefit his land development plans:  "The future! The future, Mr. Gittes," he replied.  James went to Miami because the Heat was committed to surrounding him with the expensive talent to win an NBA championship. James has a finite amount of time to win a championship. His future will either be as one of the all-time great NBA stars, or as merely an extremely talented player who never won a ring.  In James' calculus,  Cleveland was not committed to helping him achieve his goal of immortality.  The Cavaliers just wanted to be contenders who maybe might get lucky.

The fans in Cleveland in the photo gallery were booing a professional athlete who made the difficult decision that the company he was with was not as committed as he was.

This is so funny. On last night's ESPY Show, Steve Carell and Paul Rudd did a spoof of the LeBron James "Decision" show from ESPN last week.

Please watch. Thank me later.

AP photo

You'll have to stay up late — after midnight — to see the men's gold medal basketball game and American team leader LeBron James play for the gold medal. The game starts at 2:30 a.m. Sunday EDT.

If you can't keep your eyes open that long, check out the men's marathon — perhaps the most Olympic of Olympic sports. It'll finish live during NBC's prime-time telecast from 7:30 p.m. to midnight EDT.

— Mike Persinger

BEIJING — At some point in this men's basketball competition at the Beijing Olympics, nearly every player on the U.S. team has seized a moment or two for his own.

If you're Argentina, that has to make you nervous.

Not every U.S. player has had his turn.

BEIJING — Everywhere the USA men's basketball team goes, their headphones are sure to follow.

Check out this picture: From left to right, that's Jason Kidd, LeBron James and Michael Redd walking through the mixed zone after beating Germany on Monday wearing the big headphones that were gifts from James. They're wearing "Beats by Dr. Dre" headphones."

Below, James talks about why he sprung for the headphones.

BEIJING — Jason Kidd might not ever live this down with his superstar teammates on the U.S. men's Olympic basketball team.

James committed the minor sin of taking a layup on a breakaway feed from LeBron James instead of dunking in the second half of an impressive U.S. win over Spain on Saturday.

He's already the oldest man on the team at 35 and takes plenty of stuff about that. Here's first James, then Kidd, talking about the play.

BEIJING — That killed the buzz.

The U.S. destroyed any illusions Spain might have had about being a close second favorite in the men's basketball competition at the Beijing Olympics with a 119-82 Pool B victory over the defending World Champions at the Beijing Olympic Basketball Gymnasium on Saturday.

USA forward LeBron James scored nine of the Americans' first 16 points, while the U.S. forced Spain into boo-boo after boo-boo and beat Spain to the other end to score.

BEIJING — The first time I interviewed LeBron James, I was working at The Sporting News and James was 16 years old and still tearing up both the basketball court and the gridiron.

That was before he became the Next Big Thing, before he signed the huge Nike deal, basically before he became "King James."

So it's fascinating for me to watch James at work with the media here in Beijing at the Summer Olympics, and to hear what he will talk about openly and what he won't address.

On Wednesday before the U.S. team practiced at Beijing Normal University, we got some of the former.

Someone asked what it was like to ride the pine in 2004 at the Athens Games. Listen to his response.

Keep in mind that LeBron played well in Athens, he just didn't play a lot. The story, I'm told by people who were there, goes that U.S. coach Larry Brown had a habit of yanking James after he'd make a string of great defensive and/or offensive plays.

BEIJING — Someone forgot to flip the switch.

The U.S. beat Angola 97-76 at the Beijing Olympic Basketball Gymnasium on Tuesday in a game that could only be described as a comedown from Sunday's electric opener against China.

It wasn't until a random group of fans op on the third level started chanting, "USA! USA! USA!" with the Americans up by 25 at the end of the third quarter that the building showed any life.