LeBron’s move changes everything
Just call it the summer of L. A. Bron. While the hockey world processed John Tavares coming home to Toronto, one of the greatest basketball players who ever shook the global sporting landscape, left home again for another beach locale.
This decision was far different than the previous two LeBron James free agency calls, though. Leaving Cleveland for Miami turned him into a villain and put a target on his back.
Returning to Northeast Ohio and delivering a desperately sought title confirmed his legacy as a legitimate rival to Michael Jordan and Bill Russell atop the NBA’s pantheon.
James delivered after both of his previous big calls, but delivering with the Los Angeles Lakers is a different equation altogether. More championships would be nice — both for James and for a stagnant franchise that had long considered itself the class of the NBA and one of the crown jewels in all of sports.
But James will also try to build his off-court empire in the entertainment capital of the world. Shaquille O’Neal once had similar ideas but didn’t execute. Bet on James to succeed on that front.
After never previously missing the playoffs for more than two seasons in a row, Los Angeles has fallen short five straight times, averaging only 25 wins a year in that ugly span. The Lakers aren’t yet true contenders, but the franchise is relevant again, with more to come (hello, Kawhi Leonard).
The NBA, already more popular than ever before, has to be lapping this up, especially since Golden State Warriors fatigue has to set in at some point. Now there’s a juicy new angle and the league is simply better off when its biggest fan-base and most popular franchise is in Showtime mode.
Until more shoes drop we don’t fully know what LeBron to L.A. means for the rest of the NBA, but we have some ideas.
For starters, every Eastern Conference team not named the Cleveland Cavaliers has to be ecstatic right about now. The last time a James-led squad didn’t make the Finals was back in 2010, when Los Angeles won its last championship, beating Boston. Like clockwork, James put great teams and mediocre ones on his back every year and savaged the rest of the East.
Those days are over. Boston and Philadelphia appear to be the future of the conference. The Sixers need another high-end piece and good health, while Boston’s only worry is making the math work down the line.
Meanwhile, the Toronto Raptors, who have long been waiting for this day, won 59 games this past season and will no longer have franchise nemesis James waiting to humiliate them in the playoffs. Toronto still has moves to make to deal with luxury tax concerns, but the need to shake up the top of the roster because the group was never going to overtake LeBron is no longer a primary concern.
Milwaukee’s Giannis Antetokounmpo is now the conference’s top player, that franchise is moving into a new arena and added Mike Budenholzer as its new head coach. Indiana and Detroit have talent too.
Cleveland has a huge luxury tax bill, a gigantic LeBron sign downtown that will be taken down for a second time and a bunch of veterans it should now look to move as a rebuild commences.
The East is no longer all about LeBron. On the other hand, Antetokounmpo, Philadelphia’s Joel Embiid, Pacers guard Victor Oladeipo and Toronto’s DeMar DeRozan are the only four members of the 15-man AllNBA teams that don’t play in the West. Kyrie Irving is the only member of the 2014-15 All-NBA teams still in the conference, Kyle Lowry and Andre Drummond the only members of the 2015-16 group still around.
The chasm between the two conferences, already massive, is suddenly something the league might have to be concerned about to the point of rethinking its playoff system sometime soon.
But let’s not worry about all of that right now. The King’s getting a purple and gold crown and the NBA is getting a badly-needed new storyline.