How LeBron James learned about lifes hard lessons and second chances: Terry Pluto By Terry Pluto, The Plain Dealer CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Youre LeBron James, and for a long time, youve been thinking about this. This being coming home ... again. And youve been thinking about something else. Second chances. Thats so much of what your return to the Cavaliers is all about. It begins with home. Spending all year in Northeast Ohio. Your kids in school here. Your friends close by. Your mother and wife content, because this also is their home. As you write in your Sports Illustrated story: I have two boys and my wife, Savannah, is pregnant with a girl. I started thinking about what it would be like to raise my family in my hometown. I looked at other teams, but I wasnt going to leave Miami for anywhere except Cleveland. The more time passed, the more it felt right. This is what makes me happy. What makes you happy? What really matters? You seemed to ask that question in the dead of night, those times when any of us are so tired yet we cant sleep. We stare at the ceiling and wonder where the time has gone, and what should we do with the years that we have left. Lebrons Decision Basketball Miamis Dwyane Wade, Chris Bosh and LeBron James watch as they realize they are going to lose the 2011 NBA Finals to Dallas. AP ITS BEEN 11 YEARS You are probably like most of your fans. You cant believe that you soon will be 30, that youve been in the NBA for 11 years. Thats right, 11 years. You are more than halfway through your career. Yes, its 11 years, four MVP awards and two NBA titles. But perhaps only one more chance to do this -- to come home in the prime of your career. While so many people asked you about Dan Gilberts angry letter, you never made a public issue of it. You were hurt by it, along with the booing and the ugly reaction from the fans during your first game back. But you knew something else, something that bothered you the moment you sat down for the ESPN interview on the night you announced your decision to leave. Something didnt feel right. You were sweating. Your eyes looked as if you wanted a way out, but you were trapped. Then you said those words, Im taking my talents to South Beach. That was not like you. It was so self-absorbed, so immature. The next day was worse. The next day was the celebration in Miami with the smoke machine and the prediction of Not one, not two, not three ... Just as Gilbert has some words he wished he could take back, you knew the same was true for you. return OF THE KING marks new beginning LeBron James during his freshman year at St. Vincent-St. Mary in 2000. Patty Burdon, Special to the Plain Dealer GOING TO WORK Thats why this time, you announced your decision in a thoughtful letter written with Lee Jenkins in Sports Illustrated. You wrote, Im not having a press conference or a party. After this, its time to get to work. Thats what fans here understand. You have to practice and sweat and win first before you party. And you dont brag to such an extent that turns off the average person. As you wrote, In Northeast Ohio, nothing is given. Everything is earned. You work for what you have. You remember your grandmother, Freda. She lived in a big house on Hickory Street near downtown Akron. Your grandmother was a hairdresser, an anchor to you and your mother. So many people in Akron still talk about when Freda did their hair. But on Christmas Day, 1987, Freda died unexpectantly of a heart attack. It was five days before your third birthday. Your mom was 19. In the next six years, you moved 10 times. Then you think about the Walker family -- Pam and Frank -- who took you into their home when you were 10. You spent more than a year with them, this middle class family. You missed nearly 100 days of school in the fourth grade. The next year living with the Walkers, it was perfect attendance. It was getting up every morning at 6:30, following a schedule every day, homework done after school. It was dress neatly, be polite. That year changed your life and allowed your mother to put some things in her life in order. There were times when you lived in housing projects, times when you wondered if youd just be another statistic -- another kid from the city who ends up in jail. But you usually made good choices. Your only real blunder was The Decision Show and the next day in Miami. And when you made the wrong choices, you knew it right away. And it bothered you. A lot. LeBrons Decision Basketball LeBron James and the fans have moved past the ugliness that surrounded the first years after he left for Miami. AP NO GRUDGES Thats why when you finally sat down with Gilbert and talked through the night of The Decision in 2010, you thought, Everybody makes mistakes. Ive made mistakes as well. Who am I to hold a grudge? Of all the wonderful words written in your homecoming letter, those are the most powerful: Who am I to hold a grudge? Those words will probably soften the hard hearts of those fans who said theyd never want you back. Maybe that was true for the 25-year-old LeBron James, but not the James staring at 30. When it comes to the few fans who burned your jersey in 2010 -- and the thousands who booed your return in that first game -- you dont look back in anger. As you also wrote: But then you think about the other side. What if I were a kid who looked up to an athlete, and that athlete made me want to do better in my own life, and then he left? How would I react? Some fans are still angry about how you fell apart in the final two games of the Boston series in 2010. They didnt know how that happened again in the 2011 Finals, when you seemed so lost in the last three games against Dallas. You averaged only 17 points in those finals. In the last three losses, it was 15 points, shooting 44 percent. You had your own demons under pressure that you had to learn to conquer. You did in the next three trips to the Finals. As you mentioned, winning a championship is so much harder than you ever imagined. LeBron James LeBron James has sent the message that coming back to the Cavaliers means going back to work. AP LEARNING TO LEAD When you left for Miami, some said you were just following Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh, that you were trying to take a shortcut to a title. They hinted you really werent ready to be a leader. No one can say that now. You are taking a chance with your career by coming home. A rookie general manager in David Griffin. A rookie coach in David Blatt. A team that has had the NBAs worst record in the last four years. Its a team where you are the oldest player -- at least in terms of experience. Anderson Varejao is older at 31, but he came into the league the year after you did. Its why you want Varejao around. He is the only connection to your first time here. He remembers you when you were young, when it was all new and fresh. Yes, you are the old head, as you wrote. But coming back again is new. And fresh. And in some ways, its better than the first time. Because now, youre not just a better player -- you are a wiser man.
Posted on: Sun, 13 Jul 2014 00:47:31 +0000
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