The Summer of LeBron is just getting started
The Golden State Warriors were down the hall inside Quicken Loans Arena early Saturday morning, with championship celebrations fully underway after completing a four-game sweep of the Cleveland Cavaliers to win a second straight NBA title, and a third in four years.
But inside the interview room, LeBron James was wasting little time addressing the elephant in the room: Was this his final game in a Cleveland uniform?
“I mean, I have no idea at this point,” James said. “The one thing I’ve always done is considered, obviously, my family ... especially where my boys are at this point in their (lives). They were a lot younger the last time I made a decision like this four years ago. I’ve got a teenage boy, a preteen, and a little girl that wasn’t around, as well.
“So (I’ll be) sitting down and considering everything ... (but) I don’t have an answer for you right now as far as that.”
And, with that, The Summer of LeBron officially began.
From now until whenever James makes a decision on his future, that will be the only NBA storyline that matters. Even at age 33, even after 15 NBA seasons, even after 1,382 games and more than 54,000 minutes, James remains the NBA’s alpha dog.
But where will he reside next season?
Virtually every word James has uttered over the past week would lead one to believe that he is prepared to leave the Cavaliers. He has repeatedly spoken about the pursuit of talent, about the importance of basketball IQ, about the need to play with certain types of players, about how Cleveland’s roster simply wasn’t as good as Golden State’s.
“For me, I still have so much to give to the game,” James said. “When you have a goal, and you’re about to accomplish that goal, it actually … for me, personally, it made me even more hungry to try to continue to win championships, and I still want to be in championship mode.”
That James sat at the podium with his right hand in a soft cast after punching the whiteboard inside Oracle Arena’s visiting locker room after Game 1 was emblematic of the broken roster he’s been surrounded by .
And, given how far that roster appeared from being able to compete with Golden State in the final, the idea of the Cavaliers being in championship mode is nearly impossible to comprehend.
The one variable that could potentially change all of this, though, is James’s family. Do his children decide they just want to stay in northeast Ohio? Do his sons want to follow in his footsteps?
If not here, where will LeBron go? The obvious first answer will be Los Angeles, where the siren song of sunshine, Hollywood and the Lakers — will resonate. Philadelphia has room to sign a max-level free agent to a team that already has a pair of young stars to build around in Ben Simmons and Joel Embiid — both of whom have already taken to social media to chase after James. And other teams could emerge, of course. The entire basketball world will be waiting on his decision, the third time in eight years he likely will shake the foundation of the sport.