A poll of the general population [last September] by The Q Scores Company revealed that only 14 percent of people thought of James positively, while 39 percent of people thought of him negatively. Five months later, the Q Scores show that James has slowly bounced back, though not as much as we might have thought.
As of last month, 17 percent of people see him in a positive light (a 21% jump), while the number of people who view him as a negative character dropped six percentage (33 percent).
“There was a good drop in the negative number, but it’s clearly not a quick fix,” said Henry Schafer, executive vice president of the company. “I don’t think he’ll get back to the numbers that he was at before this year, although winning a NBA title would obviously help.”
James is less associated with “The Decision” than he was a few months ago, and Cleveland’s struggles without LeBron may have provided some justification for his departure to fans outside of Ohio. However, James’ image rehabilitation hasn’t gone all that smoothly this season. There was the “Karma” incident on twitter, there was the contraction statement, there was the clumsy retraction of the contraction statement, and a host of other incidents that have failed to endear him to the viewing public.
While James is still playing at an extremely high level on the court, the Heat’s struggles in close games have probably cost him a shot at his third consecutive MVP award, and the soft-spoken, low-key Derrick Rose will likely receive his first MVP award in James’ place.
However, none of this means all that much: as Rovell mentioned, James’ only real chance to get the public back on his side will be to win the NBA title that has eluded him for the first seven seasons of his career.