LeBron James‘ relationship with the city of Cleveland has been up and down throughout his career. He was the savior of the franchise when the Cavaliers drafted him in 2003, then city turned on him when he left for Miami. He was welcomed back with open arms after his South Florida flirtation, and he’s now probably the most beloved Cleveland athlete ever after leading the Cavs to a title last year.
But if LeBron had his way back in 2003, this never would have happened. ESPN’s Brian Windhorst did a story on King James where he revealed that High School ‘Bron had no desire to play for his hometown squad.
When James was a teenager, he started attending games at the arena, and he couldn’t believe how bad the Cavs were, how empty the arena often was, with its bright blue seats seeming like a neon sign of disinterest. During his senior year of high school, he went to several games, was given courtside seats and visited the locker room. His thought was pretty clear after he watched that 17-win team with the lowest attendance in the league: They were awful, and he didn’t want to be a part of it.
The five teams with the highest odds of getting the No. 1 pick in 2003 were, in order, Cleveland, Denver, Toronto, Miami, and the Clippers. Those five teams took up spots in the top-6 of the Draft – Detroit picked second, but that selection belonged to Memphis and was protected if the Grizzlies got the No. 1 pick.
It’s easy to look back now and go “everything worked out,” but at the time, LeBron probably wasn’t off-base in wanting to go somewhere other than Cleveland. The Cavaliers had missed the postseason for five straight years and went 17-65 in 2002-03. While it had a young core – five of its six-best scorers were 23 or younger, including the team’s top scorer, 23-year-old Ricky Davis – Cleveland wasn’t exactly viewed as a young, up-and-coming team until it drafted LeBron.
Of course, James came in and the team showed tangible progress immediately. The Cavs won 35 games during his rookie year before becoming a fringe playoff team during his second season. From there, they made the postseason every year prior to his decision to leave for Miami, so everything ended up working out.
But it’s still fun to look back on a scenario where Cleveland is forced to draft someone other than LeBron because he doesn’t want to play for them. Does Dwyane Wade, Chris Bosh, Carmelo Anthony, or Darko Milicic end up in Cleveland? What do the mid-00s Pistons teams look like if they also have LeBron? How different is LeBron’s career if he goes to Detroit at No. 2 (or, maybe, somewhere else in the top-5)?
It’s always fun to look at specific moments in NBA history and go “what if?” Plenty of them would have had massive implications on the future of the league, but for the last decade of basketball, none would have been as big as “what if 18-year-old LeBron James had his way and didn’t get drafted by the Cleveland Cavaliers?”
(Via ESPN)
