LeBron James announced on Friday that he would be rejoining the Cleveland Cavaliers, instantly shifting the balance of power in the NBA and, with it, changing The Story of LeBron. Radically.
No hour-long "Decision" TV programme this time. Just a simple essay on the Sports Illustrated website announcing the move and his motives.
Under the headline, “I’m Coming Home,” he writes about his decision to return to where he started after four years and two titles in Miami.
“My relationship with Northeast Ohio is bigger than basketball,” he says. “I didn’t realise that four years ago. I do now.”
He was largely hailed for the move, and for how he handled it. Understated, measured. The word “mature” was used a lot.
It is, no doubt, a very nice redemption story of sorts. Older, wiser, the world’s best basketball player returns to the humble little slice of earth that produced him.
I don’t doubt the sentiments are very real – that LeBron does feel a deep connection with his Northeast Ohio home, that returning to win the region the championship that has long eluded it had a deeply emotional appeal to him.
But I also think there was a little element of LeBron and what motivates him that showed through just a peak in this latest career-altering process, that I think perhaps went overlooked.
Earlier in the week, the website Deadspin posted a previously-unpublished profile of James, crafted by its author for a British magazine around a promotional trip in 2011 to Barcelona. The culmination of the trip, which the author wrote he later learnt was largely facilitated by Nike, was a one-on-one, sit-down interview with LeBron.
The author, Benjamin Markovits, admitted the scene was at least a little overwhelming, and wrote he felt he largely failed to pierce LeBron’s media-savvy exterior – a frustration anyone who’s ever interviewed anybody is surely familiar with on some level.
What largely made the piece interesting was how revealing it was into the very intricate process, from the legion of people around him and from Nike, that went into crafting LeBron’s media image in the still-fresh post-“Decision” world – including the revelation at the end that the Nike people were upset with the story and arranged for it to never see the light of day.
Every celebrity superstar, of course, is meticulously managed in some way, but it was interesting to see LeBron's particular way, at least as it was three years ago.
I mention a three-year-old interview in conjunction with LeBron’s announcement on Friday because there was one particular quote from 2011 that I found echoed in 2014.
Markovits, in 2011, asked LeBron what he would do if he wasn’t in basketball, and James responded, naturally, “It’s hard for me to even think what I would go back and do if I didn’t have the game.” A boilerplate answer to a boilerplate question.
But LeBron goes on a bit further. “I know one thing that I love to do, and that’s giving back to underprivileged kids. I have the LeBron James Foundation which focuses on helping underprivileged kids and supporting single-parent mothers. I grew up experiencing both of those things — I know with basketball or without basketball I would be doing that.”
It’s that seamless transition into promoting his foundation that is the true mark of well-coached media star. LeBron, to his credit, really nails it.
In his “Coming Home” essay, near the end, he drops it in again, with nearly as deft a touch as he drops shots. “My presence can make a difference in Miami,” he writes, “but I think it can mean more where I’m from. I want kids in Northeast Ohio, like the hundreds of Akron third-graders I sponsor through my foundation, to realise that there’s no better place to grow up.”
And that’s part of what struck me most about LeBron’s “Decision II” - in addition to being a sound financial and basketball move, it ineffably makes LeBron seem bigger.
The financial and basketball motives for the Cleveland move are clear. For one, he’ll be getting paid much more now, and for another, Miami weren’t the guarantee anymore in 2014 they were back in 2010.
Dwyane Wade is broken down. Chris Bosh isn’t quite what he was. The financial flexibility under the NBA’s salary cap wasn’t there for the Heat to improve the team without all of their Big Three taking drastically reduced contracts to stick it out in South Beach and hope for reinforcements.
James returns to Cleveland with a younger, better supporting cast than he could have expected going forward in Miami, and certainly much better than he had in his first stint with the Cavaliers. If he originally left Cleveland to win, then he returns, well, in quite a good position to win.
But I think those parallel foundation references, spaced three years apart, reveal another element to this, and give us at least a slight peak into LeBron the person Markovits felt he never found.
It was about a decade ago now that James first said in an Associated Press interview, in a quote that would become fairly famously associated with his early rise, that he wanted to become a billionaire. The first athlete billionaire.
LeBron has long been many things to many people, but one thing he’s not really been given enough credit for is being LeBron the CEO of LeBron James, Inc.
Back in 2010, LeBron’s biggest impediment toward being a truly global superstar was his inability to win championships. His brief time in Miami solved that. In 2014, the only thing his image still suffered from was potentially being seen as a mercenary with something of a muddied legacy in the aftermath of “The Decision”.
There was, it would always be felt, something left unfinished in Cleveland.
The reaction around the basketball world on Friday showed his latest decision was the final chapter in a successful, four-years-long image rehabilitation.
LeBron is savvy. Above all else, he is basketball savvy, but his interview three years ago and his Sports Illustrated essay on Friday show him to also be extremely media and business savvy.
James has always come across as very aware of his outside perception and has appeared to care a good deal about it. In both of his free agency decisions, he has taken a very direct role (for better or worse) in crafting his legacy.
LeBron will be around in the public conscious for long after his basketball days are over. His move back to Cleveland, yes, lets him reconnect with his roots, raise his own two sons as Northeast Ohio boys and help revitalise and rejuvenate a place very dear to him.
I don’t doubt the sincerity of those motivations. I don’t doubt him when he writes, “what’s most important for me is bringing one trophy back to Northeast Ohio.”
But I also don’t doubt there’s business and PR sense in this move, too. I don’t doubt that it raises his stature and makes him more marketable in the long term.
It lets him rewrite his legacy, as he wants it written, and finish his business in Cleveland.
Somewhere in the back of his mind, when over the past week he considered what to do with his future, I suspect he sensed that his grand return to the Cavaliers would also boost his quest to become something even larger than one of basketball’s all-time greats.
And I suspect he liked the idea of that. Perhaps just enough to tip the scales.
LeBron’s going home. It accomplishes for him satisfying basketball and personal goals.
And, a little bit behind all of that, it helps his lofty business-minded goals, too. Don’t underestimate LeBron’s billionaire ambitions.
jraymond@thenational.ae
Follow us on Twitter @SprtNationalUAE