No romance, no closure: Why LeBron's move feels a bit sour
Returning to the East makes sense and Philadelphia's roster is loaded with talent, but at 41, James prefers a corporate and cold move over drama or nostalgia. Now there is only one way to sell this move: to bring the Sixers their first championship in 43 years.
Last year, his 23rd year in the league, was perhaps the most enjoyable for a neutral viewer to watch LeBron James. The athleticism, speed, power, endurance, and agility may have lost some of their value to the cruel Father Time, but LeBron's statistics were a fata morgana: 20.9 points per game, 7.2 assists, and 6.1 rebounds on 51.5 percent shooting from the field. Unreal. Only the statistics, almost as always, are distorted. The charming part of watching LeBron James last year was the personality-driven, complementary, selfless part. The ability of one of the five greatest players in the history of the game, and with a megalomania of 9 on the Ronaldo scale, to internalize his limitations. To admit to himself that in a team with Doncic and Austin Reaves, he is the third fiddle. Wow. From this perspective, LeBron's professional choice is not a bad choice. If in the Lakers he was the third wheel of a motorcycle, in the Sixers he will be the spare tire of a car. Philadelphia is loaded with talent. It has a young backcourt, Embiid — who could be the most dominant center in the league if his resume didn't read like a script for a hospital drama, and Jalen Brown who arrived in the summer. Everyone needs a ball. Personally, for LeBron, this will be a year of settling, of being a follower. If he demands the ball, it will shatter into pieces. LeBron's return to the East is also a good professional move. The Knicks may have won a championship, but it is a vulnerable team. It is not a super-team. In the West, you have to get past San Antonio and Oklahoma, two dinosaurs. In the East, everything is open. Marketing genius, less sentimental. So why does this decision smell a little less good than it seems? LeBron James is an industry. He is a corporation. His decision and the path to it since he announced he was leaving the Lakers and continuing to his 24th season in the league, grabbed all the headlines of the NBA section in the sports columns. Even during the World Cup, someone always made sure to leak a piece of information that jumped LeBron back in the ratings. More than a quarter of a billion dollars passed through the accounts of the "Kalshi" platform in attempts to bet on where LeBron would go. Marketing genius. But there is a problem with being a corporation that has to market itself all the time: you disconnect from emotion, you disconnect from sentimentality, from memories. You disconnect from 50 percent of the reasons why people get addicted to sports. It's not just wins and championships. The sweet story of LeBron from last year is not just the self-recognition, but the fact that he played with his son on the same parquet, on the same team, in the Lakers. To leave such a situation, LeBron had to give basketball and sports fans (not Sixers fans) an emotional reason to connect with him. I know it's a bit unfair to write such a thing about a 41-year-old player who is still ranked among the twenty best players in the league by every possible metric, but that is the reality. What is the story of LeBron James in Philadelphia? I look at the three other teams that were involved in rumors about his arrival. In Golden State, he would have collaborated with Steph Curry — four championships each, the two most dominant players in the league in the post-Jordan era. There is a story. In Miami, he played and won championships, and Giannis arrived. There is a story. In Cleveland? So, it's true that if in Philadelphia they will need to play with four balls next year to satisfy the starting five, then in Cleveland James Harden alone needs three balls — but could there have been a more beautiful story than that? He already returned once, played the best basketball of his career, led the team to epic battles against Golden State and to winning one championship. The prodigal son who returned home and bought back the hearts of the local fans, after they had already burned his jerseys when he made "The Decision" to move to Miami. Cleveland reached the Eastern Conference Finals last year, and without his colossal mental collapse in the second half of the first game, it would have given the Knicks a fight. LeBron could have been the missing piece there. Quite a story.
A mercenary at the end of the road. LeBron's decision makes him, at a very late stage of his career, a mercenary. He is setting out on another Columbian voyage in an attempt to find another island of championship. LeBron has always chased championships, records, and his place in history. He managed to build, since he moved to Miami, rosters that competed for championships. He arrived at the Lakers with Anthony Davis. He was always the locomotive of that train. Now he is just being dragged along. Part of the process. There is only one way to make a story out of this. There are not many cities in America that are as crazy about sports as Philadelphia. There is no city where fans love their teams so much — "love-choke" would be a more accurate definition. LeBron has only one way to make a story out of this: that it will be a story with a happy ending. The best one. The Sixers fans have been waiting for a championship for 43 years. LeBron was born a year and a half after the last championship. There is no gray area here: either a championship, or a crappy decision that everyone will forget by the end of the season.
