I’m watching a Miami Heat game when, during a commercial break, a familiar image appears onscreen. It is a muscular, balding, dark-skinned man who also happens to be the best basketball player in the world. In the commercial, this man finds a band of children waiting at the door of his zillion-dollar Miami mansion and, like a basketball Pied Piper, he leads the kids on an impromptu tour of his city.

The commercial is meant to sell me on the idea that it would be a lot of fun to hang out with LeBron James. But I can’t help but notice something: it does not look like it would be a lot of fun to hang out with LeBron James. Even in the scripted, controlled environment of a commercial shoot, James has no real ability to connect with the paupers who pay his salary. And this gets me to thinking about one of the great paradoxes of today’s NBA: because he might be the best basketball player of all time, it is impossible to talk about the NBA without also talking about LeBron James, but talking about LeBron James isn’t all that enjoyable.

This isn’t usually the case. Usually it is distinctly enjoyable to discuss elite athletes. We either love them or we hate them and we will fall all over ourselves to explain why you should, too. We do this not only because they are great athletes, of course. We do it because we’ve noted something in their personalities that has caused a reaction in us. A definable characteristic that sets them apart. Muhammad Ali’s cocksure joviality. Pele’s playful self-deprecation. Michael Jordan’s cutthroat cool.

But there isn’t much to love or to hate about LeBron James, largely because it feels impossible to know LeBron James. He seems as manufactured as the shoes he sells. He hasn’t built a personality; he’s built what he thinks his personality should be. And while I’m no psychologist, I can’t help but think that this has a root cause. Specifically, that LeBron James has always been the best. He’s never met challengers he couldn’t beat, because no one could beat him. The result is what we’ve got: the best basketball player in the world can’t imagine it any other way. LeBron James is a basketball cyborg who, like all cyborgs, can’t understand why being indestructible is such a big deal.

In the Nike commercial, after James leaves the kids outside the gym so he can train, and after he plays pick-up basketball at a local playground, and after he jogs home with his band of acolytes behind him, the commercial’s ending takes center stage.

In this ending, LeBron James hitches up his Nike backpack, waves at the kids, and then a pair of iron gates opens to allow him entry to his own home. After he’s inside, the gates close, leaving the children in the street.

It couldn’t be more fitting. LeBron James has always lived in a mansion, one way or another. And because he has, basketball fans will always be left on the other side of the fence.