Written by Jesse Lamovsky

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I think LeBron was bound to win a Championship at some point. Either he was going to win one the way he did Thursday or he was going to channel Bob McAdoo for the ’82 Lakers; one way or another he was getting his.

I think the talk of LeBron doing it the easy way and riding coattails should be quietly put to rest. There was nothing easy about Miami’s road to the title. The Heat were in mortal danger against both Indiana and Boston and were severely tested in the first four games of the Finals. Chris Bosh was hurt and Dwyane Wade for long stretches was as funky as sweat socks in the bottom of a gym locker. LeBron had to carry that team on his back.

And he did. Like it or not, he was absolutely brilliant in this postseason. He came through with great games in big games. He saved Miami’s bacon with sublime performances on the road in the two most critical games the Heat played this spring- Game Four at Indiana and Game Six at Boston.

He earned it. You can talk about how the collaboration between LeBron, Wade and Bosh supposedly damaged the competitive balance of the league (not mentioning that competitive balance hasn’t existed in the NBA since Jimmy Carter was President) but he still had to go out and work for it and he did. He deserved the Championship. 

I don’t think what Miami did in 2010 was any more heinous than what any other team has done to build a Championship roster. Signing LeBron James and Chris Bosh was no worse than Boston purloining Robert Parish and Kevin McHale from the Warriors (or the Lake Show getting the top pick in the ’82 Draft from the Cavaliers for Don Ford, while we’re talking about old stuff.) There is no morally right or wrong way to win a title; there’s only the successful and unsuccessful way.   

But the players are colluding! So what? They have free agency as a right of their profession. I’m supposed to believe guys shouldn’t be allowed to play in certain cities with certain other players; that it’s wrong for them to do so? More wrong than the Celtics and Lakers ripping off superstars from bankrupt and incompetent teams, which they did for decades? Why? Either way the rich get richer, which is the law of the range in the NBA anyway.

Obviously tampering on the part of teams is out of line, and it’s not improbable that there was tampering involved in the LBJ-Wade-Heat confabulation. But no, I don’t see the immorality of superstars joining forces.      

I don’t think I have any affinity whatsoever for the Thunder. They’re a team pilfered from a premier NBA town with great fans. They lack compelling storylines. There’s no Dirk Nowitzki title quest to get behind. They had every opportunity to send this series back to Oklahoma City and blew it with foolish, undisciplined play. They get no sympathy from me. I don’t dislike their players (except maybe James Harden, a flopping frontrunner who vanished in the clutch) but Clay Bennett and Aubrey McClendon can suck on it as far as I’m concerned. There were no “good guys” in this series.

I think that had LeBron re-signed in Cleveland in 2010, he and the Cavaliers would still be without a title. 2009 and ’10 were his window to get one here and it didn’t happen. It would have been a case of diminishing returns from then on, as the supporting cast went begging and the relationship between LeBron and the organization, like that between Dewey Howard and the Magic, became more and more twisted and unhealthy.

I still think LeBron leaving was the best thing for him and for the Cavaliers. A divorce was necessary for both sides. LeBron needed to go somewhere else to get a better shot at winning a title and the Cavaliers needed a fresh start and a break from their dysfunctional relationship with LeBron. What they were doing at the time was not working, and I doubt it was ever going to work. It was time to hit the reset button.

I think I might be insane for insisting that it was for the franchise’s own long-term good to part ways with the best player in the world, but I’m sticking to it, damn it. You can be married to Scarlett Johansson, but if you come home and find her in a gang-bang with the Jehovah’s Witnesses who came to the door you still need to move on and not look back.

I still think LeBron sandbagged the Boston series, at least to a certain extent. I think he was frustrated by the tenacity of the Celtics, personally angry at his teammates for reasons we may never know, probably banged-up physically, already knew he was leaving and just kind of checked out. I know the 2011 Finals are evidence in favor of the “choker” camp in the choker-versus-quitter debate regarding the Boston series; I still think it was more of the latter. He looked to me like a kid on the last day of school.

I think, having said all that, LeBron is more than welcome to opt out of his Miami contract and return to Cleveland in 2014. I wouldn’t mind seeing him play with Kyrie Irving and MKG/Bradley Beal. Thing is, LeBron is probably the only mega-star in the NBA that might be willing to play in Cleveland under the right circumstances. He has no affinity for the city (I’ll get to that later) but it’s convenient to his Summit County stopping grounds and he’s comfortable here. I’ll just stop now.

I don’t think LeBron is any more of a feckless putz than 90 percent of his peers. He’s just a better player than 99 percent of them, so his fecklessness is measured on a different scale. The 12^th man for the Charlotte Bobcats probably has a distorted sense of his own place in the universe as well.

I don’t think LeBron foresaw the backlash generated by the Decision. I don’t think he wanted or expected to be despised anywhere, including in Cleveland. He was blindsided by the wave of derision and criticism he took all of last season, culminating in the meltdown in the Finals against Dallas. I think he foolishly allowed himself to be talked into what turned into a public-relations nightmare. If he had to do it all over again, I think he’d do it differently. He’s all but said as much.

I think the tribulations of the last two seasons made LeBron a tougher player. I’m not sure he ever would have gone through that metamorphoses had he stayed in Cleveland. There was too much enabling here and not enough accountability. In Miami he was put in a position where he had to take responsibility for his actions and his approach to the game. Had he stayed here he’d probably still be dancing on the sideline, taking fake pictures, ignoring the post, losing in the playoffs and skating by as the blame went everywhere but on him. He would still be in the bubble.

I think I’m going to pat myself on the back real quick for saying for years that LeBron needed to commit more to playing in the post.  

I think people need to cut out this practice of combining the Cavaliers logo with that of whatever is playing Miami in the Finals. You know; the “OKCLE” thing. I don’t have the words to describe how pathetic it looks.

I don’t think the fans that claim “they don’t care that LeBron left, they just care about how he left” are being completely honest. I think a large segment of the fan base despises LeBron simply because he left. I also think a segment despises him because he didn’t play the role they created for him: hometown hero. LeBron never cared about being a hometown hero, unless the hometown in question is Akron. There was zero spiritual connection between him and Cleveland and he made no bones about it. People resent that.

I don’t think I get why the Decision bothered fans so much, at least to this day. It was a fiasco for LeBron- and a boon to the city. It changed the storyline from “Cleveland sucks so badly it can’t even hold on to a guy who grew up 45 minutes from downtown” to “Cleveland just got victimized by this narcissistic asshole.” People that had spent two years loudly proclaiming LeBron’s imminent departure now sympathized with a city done wrong by a spoiled, vacuous prima-donna that wanted his glory served up on a platter. The Decision basically let us off the hook. That said…

I think Dan Gilbert should have edited his post-Decision Comic Sans letter- heavily. Starting, of course, with his guarantee that the Cavaliers (40-108 since the Decision, by the way) would win a Championship before LeBron. Dan could have let LeBron have the last word, but he just couldn’t help himself. And now he’s a laughingstock. I know Cavaliers fans needed to hear something from the owner, but the Letter just looks more and more ill-advised by the day.  

I think I’m fully over it. LeBron to me has become Manny Ramirez as a Red Sock- a great player that used to play in Cleveland, nothing more. I’m aware others think differently. I’m not going to tell them they’re wrong, that isn’t my prerogative. But it’s been two years. The Cavaliers have an opportunity to build something new that might be entertaining and fun to Witness, in its own way. LeBron is history here, not news.

I think all LeBron can do is admit he’s made mistakes, and he pretty much has. My only beef has always been the Boston series, but that outcome can’t be changed- and who knows, maybe the Cavaliers would have lost that series even had LeBron been on the level.

I don’t think this turn of events affects us in Cleveland any more than we allow it to affect us. Look, we didn’t lose this series- Oklahoma City did. (And you never know- that could have been the Thunder’s best shot. Everyone thought the Magic would be back after the 1995 Finals and you saw what happened there.) We lose enough around here to take on another city’s defeats as our own. Let the Okies cry over the Thunder.

I still think there will be some sort of burial of the hatchet between LeBron and the Cavaliers. Maybe it won’t happen while LeBron is still playing, but at some point it will- and it should. Look, this is the best player in the history of the franchise, by a country mile. He is the first Rookie of the Year and only MVP the franchise has ever produced. He helped win the franchise’s only conference championship. If Albert Belle can return to the good graces of the fans, why can’t LeBron? Time heals all.