By Ian Laird
While LeBron hasn’t received the same amount of backlash this year as he did after, his now infamous Decision, there has been plenty of criticism from Cavaliers fans who feel like LeBron is obligated to play for his hometown team forever. Guess what? He doesn’t owe Cavaliers fans anything, and here’s why.
1. Most Players Never Even Play for Their Hometown Team
In the early years of the NBA, stars like Wilt Chamberlain, Oscar Robinson, and Jerry Lucas played for their hometown team due to a now defunct rule known as the Territorial Pick in which teams could forfeit their first round pick in order to select a player that played college basketball within 50 miles of the NBA team’s home arena. The limitations and problems that rule introduced are clear and so the NBA removed the rule in 1966. This led to the opposite happening where major stars rarely played for their hometown team. Instead most players opted to stay with whatever team drafted them for most, if not all, of their career. Then in the modern era it became more common for players to switch teams in free agency, and yet many have yet to play for their home teams. By my count there have been 38 players who made an All-NBA team in the past year and grew up near the home city of an NBA team. Of those 38 the list of players who have never played for their hometown team is extensive while the list of players that have is much shorter. Here is that list of players who have and the team they played for: LeBron (Cleveland Cavaliers), Dwight Howard (Atlanta Hawks), Dwyane Wade (Chicago Bulls), Chauncey Billups (Denver Nuggets), Deron Williams (Dallas Mavericks), Derrick Rose (Chicago Bulls), Joakim Noah (New York Knicks), and DeAndre Jordan (Dallas Mavericks). That is it, all nine of them, and of those nine Howard and Wade only played one season, Williams joined Dallas at the tail end of his career, Noah has essentially been banished from the Knicks, and Jordan just signed with the Mavericks and has yet to play a game. Only LeBron, Billups, and Rose had extended periods with their home team and were successful during that period. For the most part the other 29 players have had chances to join their hometown teams in free agency, but as we just saw with Paul George more and more players are opting to chase rings and big contracts instead of becoming a hometown hero.
Additionally in order for LeBron to begin his career with the Cavaliers a few things had to fall in place that were outside of his control. First the Cavaliers had to be bad enough the previous year that they feel towards the bottom of the lottery so they could possibly be in a position to pick him. Then the ping-pong balls had to fall in their favor so that they actually won the first overall pick. When Cleveland did select him there was an unreasonable expectation that he would stay there because it was where he grew up, even though if he had been drafted by any other team there wouldn’t be any pressure for him to play in Cleveland at some point in his career. All of this is to say that LeBron playing for Cleveland, in not just one, but two stints, is a unique situation that isn’t the norm for the rest of the NBA, so people who believed he would finish his career out with Cleveland were naive in thinking so.
2. He Gave the City its First Title in 52(!) Years
In a four year run in which the Cavaliers made the NBA Finals every year LeBron won Cleveland its first title in 52 years, and arguably could’ve ended the drought a year earlier if Kevin Love and Kyrie Irving had been healthy and able to play the whole series. LeBron promised to bring a title to Cleveland and he fulfilled his promise, and because of that he should be looked at as a hero for winning a title, rather than a villain because he decided to leave.
3. LeBron Clearly Disliked Some of the Staff and Players in Cleveland
LeBron’s rocky relationship with owner Dan Gilbert is well chronicled after Gilbert penned a letter following LeBron’s first departure in which he called LeBron’s decision a “cowardly betrayal” and a “display of selfishness”. First off those statements are a deluded mentality in which Gilbert, along with owners across the sports world, clearly thinks players aren’t allowed to move teams on their own volition, but these owners will then find no issue with trading away those players because as they say it’s a business. Free agency is meant to allow players the chance to move on to new environments where they either get a new challenge, more money, or a better chance of winning a title. It was clear that the aging roster LeBron left in 2010 was going nowhere because management had failed to add players around LeBron who were still in their prime. Miami offered a chance to finally break through and win a title and LeBron shouldn’t be criticized for opting to move. When he returned it was evident in his coming home letter that he was coming back for the players on the roster and the fans. Not to mend fences with Gilbert. That cold relationship hasn’t thawed with neither party making a move to make up with the other. LeBron was further frustrated with Gilbert last year when he made the decision to not extend general manager David Griffin, someone LeBron openly enjoyed working with. To make the situation even worse though the move came the same day Griffin opened up talks with the Chicago Bulls on a Jimmy Butler trade, and came in the midst of Paul George trade rumors. Those talks quickly ceased and Cleveland was forced to scramble to find an adequate replacement before free agency started, and while LeBron didn’t dislike Koby Altman, Altman didn’t have the same level success in his deals as Griffin. The makeup of the roster had also shifted dramatically since LeBron’s first season back in Cleveland. Players and long time friends of LeBron like James Jones, Richard Jefferson, Anderson Varejao, and Mike Miller were all gone, Kyrie Irving, the player LeBron was most excited to play with when he returned, had asked to be traded away. Then many of the new acquisitions from the Summer failed to pan out, and at the trade deadline the roster got another massive overhaul with only four players on the team who had also been on the roster in the 2014-15 season, Kevin Love, the third member of the big three who never seemed to have the best of relations with LeBron, J.R. Smith, we all remember what happened in that first game of the finals, Kendrick Perkins, and Tristan Thompson. LeBron’s body language towards the end of the regular season and during the playoffs showed he didn’t enjoy playing with this team, and if that was the case then of course he was going to leave. In any other profession it is perfectly acceptable to leave your current job that you are unhappy with if you get an offer from another place that you would enjoy being at, so why is it any different for athletes.
4. The Region and the Basketball Team are Separate
This ties into the previous point in that LeBron can like northeast Ohio without liking the basketball team. I feel like this should be a pretty obvious point, but many sports fans, not just Cleveland fans, but sports fans believe cities revolve around the professional sports teams in the area, and while yes, those teams are often an integral part of how the city functions, and yes, they bring people together, they aren’t the only thing these cities are about, almost all of these cities offer so much more outside of sports. His decision to leave the Cavaliers organization doesn’t mean he is suddenly turning his back on the city. This move by LeBron isn’t a personal attack on the city or people of Cleveland, he is simply exercising his option to determine where he plays basketball. He clearly still loves the city and the people there, and will always consider Akron and Cleveland to be his home, but he just doesn’t enjoy playing basketball there.
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