LeBron James doesn’t have to listen to me. But he should play one final, magical season for the Cleveland Cavaliers. And not for basketball reasons.
Tuesday’s news that we will see him in uniform for a record 24th season, just not for the Lakers, set off a free-agency courtship by other teams, including the Cavs and the Golden State Warriors.
Cleveland is 40 miles up the road from the place that raised him, the place where he became one of the greatest athletes of all time. That place, Akron, Ohio, is where his heart, his cares, his mom, his philanthropy reside.
LeBron James doesn’t need another championship ring or another record. He needs to be loved more. Cleveland and Akron can help with that. For all of his on-court achievements, LeBron is, at least from certain quarters, one of the most underappreciated and internet-hated superstars of the modern era.
Some of it comes from his own puzzling choices — why tease retirement by promising a surprise announcement, only to unveil a liquor brand partnership? At times, he speaks reflexively without thinking ahead — like when he said he doesn’t enjoy playing in Memphis because of the poor quality of the hotels where the players stay, and that the Grizzlies should move to Nashville. Of course that didn’t go over well. Memphis is a pillar of the civil rights movement, the city where sanitation workers bravely stood up for their dignity in 1968 and where Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated on a motel balcony after traveling to support them. LeBron was frustrated by the blowback, but Memphians and others have higher expectations of him.
That said, much of the hate LeBron receives is just internet pettiness. His excellence as a player for 23 straight N.B.A. seasons means he has had the misfortune of being the face of the league in the complicated new media age. Thus, he’s a constant target of attention, both good and bad. An easy mark in the cesspool corners of social media, with its nonstop trolling, memes and now fake content generated by artificial intelligence. The proliferation of low-quality sports yap — every third person has a podcast or a YouTube show — guarantees endless chatter about foibles and rumors and limited insight into character, emotional vulnerability and the mind. Our overall understanding of the most popular athletes, including LeBron, is not very deep.
“I think people fear and hate what they don’t understand,” Chris Dennis, who is from Akron and was an early confidant to LeBron and his family, told me. “Like, how can this guy be like this for so long? He’s never broken any rules. Never demanded a trade.”
Never any scandals. Married his high school sweetheart. Grew up without a father, raised three children who’ve turned out well. A career with no major injuries. Built a business empire with close friends and little formal education. The first active N.B.A. player to become a billionaire. Still performing at a high level at age 41.
A return to Cleveland — this would be his third stint with the Cavs — is a chance to be remembered beyond sports. And that is more important than it has been in a long while.
We need inspirational leadership wherever we can find it, and urgently. We need counterweights to division, selfishness and meanness. There’s a space for LeBron to occupy.
Sports, and their most magnificent stars, have a special power to lift us out of our low spirits, to bring together human beings who might have nothing in common but their worship of a team. Look at what the Knicks’ run to the N.B.A. championship has done for New York City.
My proposal is simple. LeBron is a free agent. And the Cavs can certainly use him — they got swept by the Knicks in the Eastern Conference finals with a performance that can only be described as putrid. LeBron has championship pedigree and a mental toughness the current team lacks. Because of salary cap restrictions, the Cavs could offer him only a modest salary compared with the $52 million he made with the Lakers last season.
Fortunately for LeBron, he is in a position to not let money deter the larger cause. Take next season’s salary, whatever it is, and direct it to the LeBron James Family Foundation in Akron and whichever organizations in Cleveland are doing the best work improving the lives of kids in need. Make the final season of LeBron James’s career not a typical farewell tour, but a showcase for so-called at-risk kids who grew up like him.
What could be more meaningful and more beautiful than that?
Through his foundation, LeBron already is doing what few athletes attempt: confronting structural inequality with a multilayered approach that addresses education (with his I Promise School), poverty, affordable housing, health care and job development all at once. Imagine a final basketball season in which the marketing campaign centers the often overlooked kids he cares about most. Showcase them at games, build events around their challenges and successes.
The N.B.A. could get behind this, and so could LeBron’s many sponsors. You don’t have to do it for love, but there’s nothing wrong with being loved for it. We all want to be loved for something.
I don’t pretend to know what LeBron wants. But I believe career acknowledgment and adoration are not distant desires. LeBron is nearing the reflective end of his tenure as a basketball player. He continues to pile up accolades, the latest being crowned Time’s Athlete of the Century. He just took a European golf vacation with former Cavs teammates from their 2016 championship team, an experience they humorously shared on social platforms. LeBron is seen with his beard grown long, smoking cigars, drinking wine, cracking jokes, in a state of ease. Maybe that vacation was fate revealing itself.
LeBron will soon announce his next N.B.A. destination. What I know for sure is our kids, all of our kids, need examples to model.
As Chris Dennis noted, “When LeBron is here (in northeast Ohio), there is a totally different level of hope.”
LeBron has nothing more to prove athletically. Make next season bigger than basketball. Go to the Cavs for the kids. Do it for love.
