Technically, in 2010, LeBron James did leave the Cleveland Cavaliers when the going got rough. One could and probably should argue that he did the same coming off of the heels of an NBA Finals loss in 2014 when James moved back to Cleveland.
Even if this year’s version of the Cavaliers falls short of a championship, both moves were the sound basketball decisions to make. James left a lacking and aging roster to join a younger and more potent one in each instance. Whether or not you agree with the moves as it reflects on his legacy (which is always and forever pointless) is up to you, but it’s hard to imagine any of us sticking with a job and location with limited career potential when a similarly-paying gig with far greater potential opens up elsewhere.
These are the lines, the technical lines, that Detroit Pistons guard Brandon Jennings is straddling when he talks about James leaving Cleveland, lines Jennings made no bones about traipsing over when participating in an impromptu question and answer session with his Twitter followers on Monday evening. We can’t embed the tweet in question due to a silly bit of PG-13 language, but Jennings responded to one Twitter user’s lauding of James’ career by pointing out that LeBron “run too much when s--t gets tough. Never just stuck it out. Like MJ. Magic. Bird. Kobe. He's not better.”
Jennings, currently on the mend after tearing his Achilles in January, didn’t exactly go into damage control mode following. He properly defended his take on LBJ, and managed to (clears white guy throat) keep it 100:
Many media members did criticize LeBron in 2010, this one included, but you’d be hard-pressed to find one that criticized the basketball elements of his infamous decision.
Rather, just about every media member outside of the preening Jim Gray criticized the tacky way in which LeBron went about informing everyone (including his former and would-be employers), utilizing a made-for-cable-TV shlockfest that came off as hopelessly out of touch. Fewer media members laid waste to the embarrassing celebratory party the Heat threw for LeBron, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh a few days later – after all, the Heat performed the same routine for Shaquille O’Neal in 2004, two years before he would win his first ring in Miami – but there still were pangs.
In basketball terms? Not a lot of people went off on James for running too much.
The Cavs, minus LeBron, were a terrible basketball team. Weirdly, the team’s front office decided not to engage in a rebuilding project in the year that followed, and as a result the Cavs expectedly finished the season with the NBA’s second-worst record, working through a 26-game losing streak along the way. That roster was mostly made up of the same players that James with charged with leading to a title the season before, and James would be making an absolutely foolish decision on par with the foolishness of The Decision had he decided to spend the second half of his 20s with that team.
James’ run from Miami in 2014 wasn’t as clear-cut, as former teammates Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh are still All-Star players when healthy. Rare is the superstar that leaves an NBA Finalist for a 33-win team with a rookie coach, but that still doesn’t take away from just how correct James was in taking another chance on the Cavs. Jennings should recall that James also committed to the Cavaliers in 2006 with a contract extension, even with the recently-penned Larry Hughes and Donyell Marshall having already flamed out as his go-to helpers.
For Jennings (who signed with Detroit as a free agent in 2013 after deciding that Milwaukee wasn’t best for his career) to compare LeBron with Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant, however, is more than a little off.
For one, Magic was gifted with the game’s best player in Kareem Abdul-Jabbar when he was drafted by the Los Angeles Lakers. Bird was gifted with one of the NBA’s best cores in Boston, a team that would win a title in just his second year. The Lakers dealt for Kobe Bryant just weeks before they signed Shaquille O’Neal; and Kobe himself both negotiated free agent deals with several other teams in 2004, and demanded a trade from Los Angeles in 2007. Thankfully for Lakers fans, those demands weren’t met.
Jordan’s situation was different. His struggle was real, he waited three years for the Bulls to acquire Scottie Pippen and Horace Grant and then a few more years to let them develop into championship helpers. MJ’s first title came in 1991 in his seventh season, whereas James had to wait eight years.
It’s true that Jordan was a free agent in 1988, but in that offseason Chicago signed him to an eight-year, $25 million deal that was a major coup for Jordan in a different era. The money wasn’t always the same with all teams back then, as it is now, and Jordan (as most players of his time did) chose long-term security in a still-growing league over a short-term contract and an eye on Philadelphia to see just how well his buddy Charles Barkley’s team was doing. Free agency just wasn’t the same back then.
It’s true that some of James’ contemporaries like Bryant (who, again, strongly considered free agency and asked for a trade), Tim Duncan (who famously spent a weekend in Orlando in 2000 perusing their free agent offer), Dirk Nowitzki (who pondered returning to international play after his rookie contract expired during his tough rookie year) and Dwyane Wade (who got to play with LeBron James for a while) have stayed in one uniform throughout their careers. They’ve also had some good luck and great front offices to work under along the way.
James had no such luck in his first go-round with Cleveland. Expecting him not to play by the same rules as just about every other NBA free agent, possibly wasting his prime as a result, just because some fans like the idea of one legend sticking with one team is ridiculous.
Especially when those fans – including Jennings, working on a contract he signed as a free agent – would hold themselves to the same ideal when choosing their own professional course.
Jennings, who famously eschewed making millions for the NCAA as an unpaid laborer in order to play professionally overseas in 2008-09, still won us all back over with this tweet:
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Kelly Dwyer is an editor for Ball Don't Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at KDonhoops@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!
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