That's ----in' teamwork!

The sports world provided us two interesting examples of what some people think it means to be a good teammate in 2007. The first came on Monday night at the New Orleans Saints-Atlanta Falcons game, which happened to coincide with the sentencing of Atlanta quarterback Michael Vick on his dogfighting conviction.

After scoring a touchdown, the Falcons' Roddy White yanked up his jersey to reveal the slogan "Free Mike Vick" scrawled on his t-shirt. And in pregame introductions, defensive back DeAngelo Hall waved a Michael Vick poster at the fans and cameras.

White explained his actions thusly: "It ain't too much to say, you know. The team misses him and we really need him this season. There ain't too much more to say about it."

Hall said, "We did that for the simple fact we wanted to let him know we're still thinking about him."

OK, nice sentiments and all, and I guess I can stomach Hall's actions without major nausea. But White's t-shirt says all you need to know about the mentality of many of our fellow travelers. "Free" Vick? He's not Nelson Mandela. He hasn't been wrongly convicted -- in fact, he has admitted his crime and, at least on the surface, has said that he accepts his punishment. There's no need to "free" him from the bonds that he himself has accepted.

And if White really wanted to let Vick know that they needed him this season, that maybe they wouldn't be 3-10 and searching for a new head coach for the second time in 11 months if Vick hadn't been such a moron -- perhaps a better message on the t-shirt would have been, "F-U Mike Vick!"

On the other end of the teammate spectrum, it's hard to find a better example of leadership and even friendship than the actions of Lebron James last night. James was returning to the lineup after missing five games with a hand injury, while forward Anderson Varejao was playing his first game of the season after a lengthy holdout during which he said he didn't want to play in Cleveland.

But King James checked his ego at the locker room door and forsook what would have been a thunderous ovation during introductions, choosing instead to enter the game six minutes into the first quarter -- at the same time as Varejao -- in order to spare Varejao from a wave of boos that surely would have greeted him.

"I thought by coming in with Andy it might stop some of the boos Andy might get. Andy is one of my favorite players, I was just protecting my teammate," James said after the game.

So King James, who said he'd never started a game on the bench going back to his elementary school days, decided that his teammate's comfort level was more important than his own personal glorification. That's why he's a team leader, and schmucks like Roddy White will never be anything more than followers.