Isn't karma a funny thing?

Just over two months ago the world watched a heralded young Irishman take the Masters by storm, building, what seemed going into the final day, if not an insurmountable lead then certainly one that would be hard to overcome.

But that final fateful Sunday came and the final nine holes laid waste to what could have been an epic performance if the wheels had not so disastrously come off the Rory McIlroy express that had been tearing through Augusta.

Fast forward to this past weekend and we watched as McIlroy, more gracious in defeat than so many of his athletic peers in victory, simply dismantled Congressional Country Club over four days en route to a record setting performance at the 2011 U.S. Open.

The beat-down McIlroy applied to Congressional will be talked about for years to come, particularly if it serves as the launch pad for what many are predicting will be the next meteoric rise toward the rarefied air of golf immortality.

I don't know if McIlroy will be the next Tiger or the next Jack. Is it possible? Sure. It's just as possible that he'll join the long list of onetime major winners who never flew quite high again.

But if I had to bet (and though I like betting I'm notoriously bad at it, as my crumpled NCAA Tournament brackets will attest) I'd lean more towards McIlroy being well on his way to what everybody wants in the suddenly Tiger-less void better known as the PGA Tour: a prohibitive frontrunner that gets the nod as tournament favorite going forward.

In my lifetime (which did not include any near brushes with the dinosaurs, yuk, yuk, yuk…) only two people have led the U.S. Open from wire to wire: Tiger, twice, and this McIlroy kid.

I fully understand that, to date in his career, McIlroy has won exactly two tournaments on the Tour. I fully understand that he has been on people's radar for years, and didn't just explode onto the scene this past weekend like Tiger did all those years ago at the Masters in 1997.

But, my goodness, to stare down that epic collapse from just this past April? And to return the golf gods the favor by trampling both the field and the course at his very next major championship? And to do it all with grace and charm and good humor?

Kids today, right?

Speaking of kids, what IS the deal with LeBron James?!?

Just last year James single-handedly orchestrated the most graceless of exits one could possibly imagine when he famously announced he was packing up his toys and "taking [his] talents to South Beach." Days later James and new best friend Dwyane Wade (and that Bosh guy, the one everybody likes to treat as a throw-in like floor mats for a new car) laughed it up at their pyrotechnically aided introduction with James blithely losing count when describing the number of championships he and his new amigos would be bringing home with them.

From that point on, and, if you lived in Cleveland, much earlier, James was a marked man, the "Chosen One" tattoo on his back replaced with a big ol' target. Every loss was dissected, every win greeted with a "what have you done for me lately." It was the Championship or bust for James, all the goodwill accumulated over years of carrying a dreadful Cavaliers team on his self-anointed back a vague and receding memory.

The chattering classes and retired professional athletes alike questioned James' heart and fortitude in seeking out a better hand than he'd been dealt on the banks of the Cuyahoga. From hero to villain, James had sunk not just in latitude but people's hearts.

So when the Heat lost to the Dallas Mavericks in this month's NBA Finals there was quite a bit of smug, self-satisfied rejoicing, head nodding and "I told-you-so"-ing.

And then Jason Reid of the Washington Post pooh-poohed all the schadenfreude! Last week Reid wrote that all these glad tidings at James' expense were overboard and unfair; he may have even implied they were mean-spirited. Reid helpfully pointed out that people like Ray Lewis, Michael Vick, Ben Roethlisberger, and Kobe Bryant had been involved in far more heinous activities than James, some even found guilty of actual crimes.

So James had acted like a classless, entitled jerk for a year (or more.) So what. He's still a young man, wrote Reid, he still deserves the time to learn from his mistakes.

Okay, fine, it's a point, albeit not one that I personally agree with. I'd argue that for James to pull himself over the hump, to get himself to the top of the NBA pile, instead of so regularly and predictably sticking his own foot in his own mouth, instead of making fun of other people (cough, cough…), instead of paying so much attention to what everybody else says and thinks about him, James needs to lose his rabbit ears and focus on rounding out the thing that's most supposed to be a given: his game.

You can't be the chosen one jacking up ill-advised threes from all over the court in the Finals. Especially when you're the size of my refrigerator.

And you can't stomp on all the little people (who have as many rings as you, by the way) because you fold up like a cheap suit every time the pressure gets turned up.

Suck it up, LeBron.

Champ or chump. It's up to you.

Alex can be reached at cuda24@yahoo.com