Free Agency Costs Lots…
Why did he do it… What is the real reason… Will it turn out well?
The dominoes have all fallen in the NBA. The stars have been realigned. Some good, some bad, some strange moves.
LeBron is going home to Cleveland. It’s easy to say he did it for all the right reasons. Family, the James love of hometown Akron. Wanting to lead a young team to victory. No not really.
King James got a max contract to go back to the Cavaliers. Last arithmetic exam I had 21M-per year in Cleveland is more than the 16M per year he was making in Miami.
It was more than money though. King James will be star player and coach of the team, trust me. You really think, incoming coach Dave Blatt, whose last mailing addresses were Tel Aviv and Russia, and who has never coached in this league, will really run this team. As good as the player is, this chemistry imbalance, James-Blatt will probably be more one sided that the last Cleveland coach he overwhelmed, the thrice fired Mike Brown.
But LeBron did it for other reasons. He couldn’t push around Eric Spoelstra, the Miami coach. He surely was never to get his way all the time with the Emperor Pat Riley.
LeBron might forgive crazy-man owner Dan Gilbert over the ‘coward’ letter written when James took his talent to South Beach, but LeBron could not forgive Riley.
Riley lectured him in his exit meeting this spring, about not taking the lst road out of Miami as a free agent; and staying to accept the challenge of rebuilding; and insinuating look what Miami had gotten done, while all Cleveland would ever talk about was we might get done.
James has never been spoken too like that, not before the arrival in Miami, and now likely never again going home to the 330-area code.
LeBron never recovered from the national bashing TV show, the Decision, and the ridicule that will forever be stapled to his jersey in every out of town arena he plays in.
No doubt a great player, and a great entrepreneur, but let’s be honest. It was about the money, and it was about LeBron taking his ball, and going ‘home’ so he could play by his rules in Cleveland, not Pat Riley’s rude rules on South Beach.
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