No athlete ever held so much sway over a sport without winning it all first. Think about it: “The Summer of LeBron” hasn’t even begun, yet almost everything that’s happened in the NBA the last two years has been about him.
Teams dumping salary? Clearing cap space for LeBron. Dropping down in the draft? Just making more room, in case he brings one of his superstar pals along. Hiring a coach? Run the names by LeBron first.
Small wonder the guy is accustomed to being called the King.
A handful of cities and at least one state are throwing themselves at his feet. The Knicks ran their franchise even deeper into the ground on the slim chance that James might be tempted to ride to their rescue. Rumor has it Pat Riley is willing to come down from his executive suite in Miami and return to the bench one last time, solely for the privilege of coaching him.
where, including one that reaches into the Oval Office.
And all that for a ballplayer who has yet to win even one game in the finals, let alone a championship.
Let’s be clear: At 25, James is already one of the best players in the game, with almost unlimited upside. And he has, for the most part, been a model citizen. He’s poised, polite, accessible, generous with his time and money, durable and he plays hard every night. It’s worth noting, too, that while James has plenty of people on the payroll to feed the hype machine, he’s done very little of that himself.
Yet some people theorize that James is not only enjoying all the fuss, but that he’s dragging out free agency as a way to make up for the college recruiting tour he never took. Except in this instance, the money is on the table – roughly $90 million for five years if he leaves Cleveland; $125 million for six if he stays – instead of under it. Could be.
Either way, ceding that much power to one player could only happen in the NBA. The league has always been a sucker for potential, because only five players are on the floor at any given moment and one supremely talented individual like James can make a world of difference. What’s made this pending negotiation bigger still is the notion that James and one or more of his free-agent sidekicks might band together and dictate terms instead of letting all the pieces fall where they may.
arios are too speculative to waste too much time and space here. Suffice it to say the latest involve James and Toronto’s Chris Bosh heading to Chicago, where he would join fast-rising star Derrick Rose and Joakim Noah while trying to replicate the half-dozen titles won by childhood idol Michael Jordan; or James and Bosh being recruited by fellow superstar and former U.S. Olympic team member Dwyane Wade to build a new dynasty under Riley’s guidance in Miami.
LeBron has dropped precious few clues about his choice, and just about everybody else in a position to know would incur a hefty fine for doing the same thing. Beyond his intention to insure that his family is well-fed, James says he’ll base his decision on which organization gives him the best chance to win in short order.
Staying in Cleveland would make for the best story. It would let James remain a local hero, and the Colts’ Peyton Manning continues to prove in Indianapolis, you can make plenty of money even in a medium-sized market if you win.
But doing it with the salary-capped Cavaliers is going to be a stretch, at least for the foreseeable future. Ditto for the Knicks and Nets, which have plenty of money but precious few complementary players, as well as the perpetually hapless Clippers. The Mavericks are reported to be a last-minute suitor in what sounds more and more like an episode of “The Bachelor.”
If James is serious about winning, and soon, that narrows the search down to Miami and Chicago. And if all this seems like a lot of time and effort expended just to get him that chance, imagine what’s going to happen if he actually cashes one in.
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Jim Litke is a national sports columnist for The Associated Press. Write to him at jlitke(at)ap.org
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