Last weekend marked one year since LeBron James announced he was returning to the Cleveland Cavaliers. After spending four days in Las Vegas for a Nike-sponsored camp bearing his name, a letter written by James and Sports Illustrated‘s Lee Jenkins appeared on the magazine’s website around 11:30 a.m. ET on July 11, setting off frenzied celebrations back in Northeast Ohio. Fans gathered outside James’ house in a swanky Akron suburb and at spots in and around Downtown Cleveland, and the Homecoming King was the lead story on every sportscast — and on many newscasts, too.
From bitter public breakup to sweet redemption, James knew his return would provide his native state an emotional and financial boost. He knew, too, that he’d make the Cavaliers an instant NBA title contender.
But at a price. A steep, steep price.
A year later, Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert is about to not only foot the bill for the highest-salaried team in NBA history, but Gilbert again sees James atop the organizational structure. When you pay for James, you get a healthy return on investment, must-see TV and seasons that extend deep into June.
You also play by The King’s rules. James gets input on everything — authority in some places, a voice in others — and, really, why wouldn’t he? He’s the best basketball player on the planet, still very much in his prime at 30 years old. After 12 NBA seasons, he’s the face not only of an organization that was largely faceless without him, but probably the most powerful and influential active player in NBA history. Sure, he needs care and attention and resources, but for an organization and a city chasing a championship and looking to shake years of bad teams, bad luck and just generally bad vibes, he’s more than a hometown hero, a multi-positional dictator or a guy worthy of MVP discussion even after taking a mid-season vacation and leading a team that was rebuilt on the fly and finished second in the NBA’s weaker conference.
James is worth every penny, every bit of uncertainty and every bit of drama. Gilbert knew all of this — knew it all when he wrote his own letter in July 2010, presumably had come to terms with it by the time he came face-to-face with James and his people in what was supposed to be a secret meeting last summer — and smartly was willing to sign up for it all again last year. We might never know what was said by either side when Team LeBron and Gilbert met and presumably cleared the air regarding The Decision and the hurt feelings and awful teams left behind, but we know Northeast Ohio, the Cavaliers and the NBA as a whole changed on July 11, 2014, and the words James chose in announcing his return to Cleveland after four seasons with the Miami Heat mended at least some of the scars.
The Cavaliers have seen the alternative. Having James back — even in giving him every key, even in spending an unprecedented amount of salary and the luxury tax — makes every mountain a little easier to navigate, every clash with a coach or teammate a little easier to dismiss and every outrageous calculation a little easier to justify. If the calculator breaks, well, that’s fine, too. Gilbert can afford it, and James continues to deliver.
James flew from Las Vegas to Miami the night before The Letter was released last summer. As Northeast Ohio celebrated, he was en route to Brazil for the World Cup Final. When he returned home the following week, he signed a two-year contract with the Cavaliers for maximum money and one-year player option. Signing what was essentially a one-year contract, something James did again last weekend, is the best way to maximize his basketball earnings and to maintain leverage.
He’s probably never taking his talents elsewhere again — he said as much later last summer at a formal Akron homecoming rally — but he’s well within his rights to keep his options open. He was a free agent for 10 days last summer and almost two weeks this summer, and with a new TV deal set to up the NBA salary cap and maximum salary structure again in 2016, he’s likely to decline his $24 million option for 2016-17 next June and end up making more money.
These NBA cap and tax rules are complicated, and so is James. Before the 2017-18 season, James will have a chance to sign a five-year deal worth more than $40 million per season. He might do that. Or, he might continue to go a year at a time.
He likes the drama, the attention and the leverage. He’s earned it. The LeBron James Empire has been built steadily, and it continues to grow.
A basketball genius, James has become a savvy businessman, too, and every move seems calculated. He signs when he’s ready. Last summer, he flew his four best friends from high school to Las Vegas the week he attended the camp, met with Pat Riley and ultimately released The Letter — but wouldn’t even reveal to them that he was coming home. After hitting a game-winning fadeaway jumper in Chicago in this year’s playoffs, he announced he’d called an audible and overruled the play Cavaliers coach David Blatt wanted to draw up in the previous timeout. Just after that series vs. the Bulls, James spiced up an otherwise bland media session by going out of his way to tell reporters he believed Tristan Thompson should be “a Cavalier for life” and that “there’s no reason” why the team shouldn’t do everything possible to make that happen.
Few, if any, NBA players have that kind of authority.
The financial numbers are staggering. On the day free agency officially started last week, James notified the Cavaliers he’d be signing another two-year deal with an opt-out clause for $23 million, Kevin Love signed for five years, $113 million and Iman Shumpert signed for four years, $40 million. That night, before the premiere of the movie Trainwreck in Akron, James told reporters, “It’s been good so far, but we have a lot of work to do. We still have to re-sign Tristan (Thompson). Hopefully we can bring back J.R. (Smith) as well and see if there’s some other free agents out there that’d love to come here and play if we’re able to do that.”
He doesn’t send many subtle messages.
Thompson and James not only share an agent, but James funds the agency, Klutch Sports. Though it’s generally believed Thompson, a restricted free agent will end up signing for five years and around $80 million with the Cavaliers, the sides have not finalized an agreement. That’s somewhere in the neighborhood of $80 million for rebounding and defense — Thompson switched from being a left-handed shooter to right two years into his NBA career, an indication he isn’t exactly a jumpshooter — because Thompson fits the James-led Cavs, and because James gets what James wants.
The NBA’s luxury tax hits teams that exceed the salary cap at a rate of $3.75 per dollar over the league’s salary cap of $81.6 million, then 50 cents more for every $5 million. Those with calculators and Twitter accounts project the Cavaliers to eventually be about $32 million over the cap, and to end up paying about $50 million in luxury tax penalties.
Fifty million. The NBA still caps even what maximum players make, but the true worth of James is clear. You sign his guys, you deal with his moods and quirks, you build fancy scoreboards and do fancy presentations and he keeps pushing the franchise to places it’s never been. It seems like a fair trade, really. Not long after the four-time NBA MVP announced last summer that he was returning to the Cavaliers, Forbes estimated that the value of franchise would double, to about $1 billion. Even if the 2015-16 seasons costs Gilbert over $180 million in salary and taxes, he’ll still end up doing OK. The kingdom, the empire and chasing the elusive championship justify every expense.
That new scoreboard inside Quicken Loans Arena covers around 5,500 square feet and is appropriately dubbed “Humungotron.” It was installed for the regular-season opener last October, but was so new it was basically untested before opening night vs. the Knicks, a game for which club seats sold on the secondary market for more than $1,000 and brought celebrities from both coasts to Cleveland. Way back when the Cavaliers won the NBA Draft Lottery in 2003 and selected the kid from 35 miles south, James said one of his his goals was to light Cleveland “up like Las Vegas” for Cavaliers games. He keeps delivering.
He doesn’t just command attention; he thrives on it. James never went to college but has his own swoosh-adorned locker in the Ohio State basketball locker room. He has John Calipari and Mike Krzyzewski on speed dial. He’s not just a global ambassador for Nike. He’s his own brand, has his own brand, grows his own brand. He’s an active player funding an agency that represents other active players — and actively recruits new prospects from the college ranks each winter and spring.
James took two weeks and eight games off last season, starting on his 30th birthday, and for a period returned to Miami for treatment while the in-transition Cavaliers struggled to navigate a tough trip vs. Western Conference opponents. On the night before he returned to action, James flew his friends from Phoenix to Dallas to watch Ohio State play in the first College Football Playoff title game, and he celebrated on the field with Buckeyes players after the game.
James is always on his schedule, always tending to his empire. Imagine a mid-level player — or even a pretty good one — making his own hours, betting on himself with short-term contracts, chiming in on unsettled contract negotiations involving teammates and daring everyone in a listed position of power to challenge him. It just doesn’t happen.
A lot of what James has done or is doing has rarely or never been done. That includes a kid who came from nothing succeeding while having everything, a true franchise player saving a franchise twice and crushing it once, a powerful figure exerting his power but managing to mostly avoid criticism or public power struggles. It’s good to be LeBron James. It’s probably smart to avoid conflict with him.
Going back to last July, James knew the basketball world was playing the waiting game while he hung out in Las Vegas, and he played along. The Nike LeBron James Skills Academy was divided into two groups; 30 or so college players worked out in the morning and again at night, while 100 high school prospects competed in their own two-a-day sessions. The camp was well organized — and adorned in Nike everything, of course — and the high school sessions were attended by college coaches nationwide in an active NCAA recruiting period.
Everything stopped when James entered the building. Cameramen hustled for a shot. Kids tried not to stop in their tracks and James jumped from court to court, game to game, unannounced, jumping into a game full of high school stars, breaking a sweat, then doing the same on another court. Though the Las Vegas Convention Center was full of coaches and players and trainers and invited guests — even James’ lackeys have credentialed lackeys — there was a different buzz when James entered the building.
He’d play for six or eight possessions, then he’d rest. He’d jump in a game, then jump on the training table — and trainers would come running with ice and bandages and anything else he requested. At one point James went out of his way to have a private chat with Krzyzewski, but he mostly ignored anything going on outside the ropes. Upon returning to Akron, his longtime friends, high school teammates and current overseas pros Romeo Travis and Dru Joyce III swore they had nothing more than a gut feeling about his intentions or feelings, that even in private conversations and long Las Vegas days and nights he never told them — even his best friends — that he was returning to the Cavs.
He had a private meeting with Riley, presumably in his hotel suite, and sometime during the week he met with Jenkins to work on what became The Letter. The only time he showed any emotion publicly at the camp was on Thursday afternoon, when he showed up to watch a session with Dwyane Wade, his close friend and four-year Miami teammate. As bystanders scrambled to take cell phone pics, James went out of his way to try to shoo them away. Some of his friends followed suit. With an army of cars and a police escort waiting outside to head to the nearby airport, all anyone knew about his pending decision was that James was flying somewhere and that Wade was with him.
What nobody knew is that his words had been chosen. His decision had been made. Sometime between Las Vegas and Miami, James told Wade he was going home. Sometime that night, 12 or 16 or 18 hours before the world found out, he forever changed the Cleveland Cavaliers again. There were still lots of details to sort through. There was a bunch of money to be spent, and there’s still much work to be done.
With James on board, though, every expense, headache and potential pitfall seem justifiable. More importantly, anything seems possible.
