Goodbye, Mr. James
CLEVELAND — For four years now, LeBron James has faced brutal June math.
If the man from Akron fails to go galactic in even a single game, if he misses those fallaway jumpers that make defenders close their eyes and shake their heads, if he fails to barrel to the hoop like a B & O freight train, if he has trouble levitating to swat away shots, if he is merely human, the Cleveland Cavaliers lose.
Ever since Ohio’s native son wandered back from his Miami Beach idyll in 2014, he has faced the Golden State Warriors in the N.B.A. Championship round, a team that gets more talented each year. James has dragged the weakest Cavaliers team yet to this year’s showdown with the Warriors, and now they are perched at the edge of defeat’s abyss, down 0-3.
His fans, which is to say a generous portion of the population of Ohio, have a sense of time fleeting.
James will become a free agent, and in his 34th summer he could well leave for a better-crafted team in another city. Rumors have him going to Los Angeles, to Houston, Philadelphia, or San Antonio. In 2010, when James left for the Miami Heat, the citizens of Ohio erupted in a collective and pained tantrum, as fans burned his No. 23 jersey and the team’s billionaire owner indulged in inane talk of treachery and betrayal.
A replay is difficult to imagine. No doubt some fans will grumble and moan, but he has delivered on his promises. James brought that first ever championship to Cleveland. It’s an intriguing moment when a man and his fans appeared to have matured in their relationship with one another.
Before Game 3 of the playoffs I wandered the streets and canal walkways of Akron — Rubber City, baby. Then I headed to Cleveland. And again and again, I heard the same sentiment.
James is approaching late middle-age in basketball terms. He showered tens of millions of dollars on college scholarships for poor and working class kids and he speaks up to a president intent on stirring racial embers to no good end.
A man-child has become a man.
“LeBron? I’ll talk LeBron all day long!”
Rachel Walker stops to talk with me in a parking lot within site of the Cavaliers arena in Cleveland. She’s a nurse and she is taking her adult daughter, who is disabled and wearing a Cavaliers hat, to the game.
“He said he would give us a championship — and he did. He said he would not forget our children — and he never did,” she said. “You know why the President doesn’t go after the N.B.A.? Because LeBron James will go back at him.
“Whatever he does, I wish him nothing but the best.”
I cross the street and sit awhile with Terry Smith, a husky and retired veteran of the railroads. He brought his grandchildren downtown to soak up the pregame vibe. “He brought Cleveland a championship, right? He has tremendous scholarship programs for Akron and Cleveland, right? He plays 48 minutes a game, right?
Almost: James played 46:52 in Game 3, four minutes more than any other player.
Having added up the tab, he gives me the total. “He has the right to take care of his family and go wherever he wants.”
The Cavaliers and owner Dan Gilbert have not exactly held up their side. The five best players on the court Wednesday evening were James, Kevin Durant, Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green.
Save for James, all were Warriors.
James could not find the mortar range on his jump shot Wednesday, but he scored 33 points on a variety of drives, flips and hooks and baby jumpers. He also grabbed ten rebounds, tossed 11 assists, had a couple of steals and swatted two more away.
A play in the third quarter was emblematic.
The Warriors’ Andre Iguodala, a classy defender and crafty scorer, got the ball near the Cavaliers hoop. Only James stood in his way. Iguodala faked and faked again. James did not bite, so Iguodala pitched quickly to Draymond Green, whose brilliance as a player is diminished only by his adolescent temperament. Green broke into a smile as he rose to dunk, even as James flicked rattlesnake quick hands and slapped the ball off Green’s knee and out of bounds.
James immediately took the ball out, came steaming up court and tossed a brilliant pass for an assist.
It was like watching a pirate captain swinging from the mizzen mast, dueling all comers: It was great drama, and it works against almost any teams not named the Golden State Warriors.
Cleveland’s defense, most often a porous swamp, was watertight for much of this night. They held the Warriors’ sharpshooting backcourt, Klay Thompson and Curry, to 21 points on seven for 27 shooting.
Unfortunately, this did not account for Durant. He’s seven feet tall, with elegantly long arms and the soft hands of a jeweler. To watch his pregame workout was its own treat. This night, he stood 20 feet from the basket and had a coach zip him a pass. He caught it and spun 360 degrees on his heel, came to a stop and just as quickly spun back. He immediately shot the ball.
I watched him do this 15 times in a row, and he did not miss once. I looked around for a security guard. Someone needed to pass a note of warning to James.
“He’s an assassin,” James said afterward.
And here’s where the impossibility of this team comes to bear: On any given night, when Curry is shimmying and shooting and Thompson is his metronomic shooting self, Durant is the team’s third option. Coach Steve Kerr acknowledged the glory of it. “Yeah it’s pretty nice, a luxury,” he said.
“You know that you can never, ever relax,” James said.
Earlier that day, I sat on George Kimbrough’s porch in Akron, and listened as the disabled 71-year-old welder talked of how LeBron purchases hundreds of bikes for neighborhood kids. Then he leads summer rides around his hometown, the Pied Piper of Akron. “That man has earned the right to go and find a team worthy of his talent.” Kimbrough looked at me and cackled. “Don’t talk bad about that man around here unless you want a fight.”
I wander down one ravine to another until I reached Overlook Terrace. It is a dead end street and there are thickets of Beech, black cherry and red oak edge on three sides. The street has four dowager homes, several well into their dotage. Twenty-five years ago, James and his mother washed up here, after losing one apartment or another. An older woman, Mrs. Reeves, gave shelter from the storm. James quickly put up a poster of Michael Jordan over his bed.
Then he and the neighborhood kids nailed a hoop and wooden backboard to a slanting telephone pole and played all day long. A few twisted nails are still visible. Ben Brown lived there then and now, and he recalls James as a friendly little kid – he holds his hand about three feet off the ground.
Brown has a carpet business, Barefoot Carpet, and ducks and chickens and a tomato patch out back. He figures James long ago earned the right to do as he wants. Maybe he stays, maybe he goes. That’s up to him.
We chat a while longer, and he talks of the college scholarships for local kids. He also enjoys that a kid from Overlook Terrace does not back down from an orange-haired provocateur president.
A train whistle sounds loud and mournful. It’s the Cuyahoga Valley Line rumbling through, just behind those oaks.
“I’m happy for him,” Ben says. “James inspires me still.”
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