The long-lasting legacy of “The Decision”
We’re officially now in the month of July, which would normally mean it’s time for everyone’s favorite annual soap opera in the sports world: NBA free agency.
Except, given the COVID-19 pandemic, we’ve been without sports for the better part of the last four months. Some sports, such as golf, soccer, auto racing, and horse racing, have returned in the U.S.
Other sports, such as basketball, baseball, and hockey, are planning to return later this month. Football and tennis are expected to resume later this summer and fall.
NBA free agency, which would normally be the talk of the town in July, has now been pushed back to October once the resumption of the league’s 2019–2020 season at Walt Disney World in Orlando concludes this fall.
The NBA offseason, with all of its ongoing rumors and speculation engulfing social media, has arguably become the most popular event on the annual sports calendar. It’s part of the reason why the Association is beloved by millions of people in this country. Some would even argue that the July free agency fireworks are more entertaining and fun than the actual basketball season. It’s also why the NBA is now a 12-month sport.
But there was once a time when July was not dominated by NBA free agency. That all changed after “The Decision” in 2010.
Every NBA team, media member, and fan had circled the Summer of 2010 on their calendars. It was expected to be a barn-burner with the number of All-Stars who would be on the free agent market.
Dwyane Wade, Chris Bosh, Amar’e Stoudemire, and Joe Johnson were just some of the big-name stars who would be available. But the biggest fish of them all was arguably the best player in the game, LeBron James.
Coming into the 2010 offseason, the 25-year-old James had played his first seven seasons in the NBA with the Cleveland Cavaliers and had become a superstar after being taken with the №1 overall draft pick in 2003.
He was a two-time, back-to-back MVP in 2009 and 2010, a six-time All-Star, a two-time All-Star Game MVP, a six-time All-NBA selection, a two-time All-Defense selection, the 2004 Rookie of the Year, the 2008 scoring champion, and a gold medalist for Team USA at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing.
He also willed a subpar Cavaliers team to the 2007 NBA Finals, where they were swept by the San Antonio Spurs.
Simply put, King James was coming for the late Kobe Bryant’s throne as the best basketball player in the world. And LeBron had yet to even reach his prime. So needless to say, he was arguably the league’s biggest free agent since Shaquille O’Neal in 1996.
While Cleveland was home for LeBron, the team had failed to win a title during his first seven seasons. It was most glaring in 2009 and 2010, when the Cavaliers won 60-plus games and finished with the best record in the NBA both seasons.
However, Cleveland fell short to a sharp-shooting Orlando Magic team in the Eastern Conference Finals in 2009 and to a championship-experienced Boston Celtics squad in the Conference Semifinals in 2010. We unfortunately lost out on the possibility of LeBron and Kobe facing each other in the NBA Finals.
While LeBron’s team had shown up to play in the regular season, it hadn’t in the playoffs—and that would have to change in order for LeBron to sign long-term in Cleveland.
So speculation ran amok about where LeBron would play the following season. Would he stay in Cleveland? Would he go to New York and play for the Knicks at Madison Square Garden? Would he head to Chicago and seek to follow in Michael Jordan’s footsteps in bringing the Bulls a title? Would he go to the Heat and team up with his good friend Dwyane Wade in Miami? Would he join the New Jersey Nets and his good pal, Jay-Z, before the team moved to Brooklyn?
Simply put, nobody knew.
This all took place during the infancy of Twitter, so it wasn’t like nowadays where you can just scroll through the social media platform to get news and updates. If you wanted to know what was going down in free agency, you still had to tune into ESPN and watch SportsCenter.
July 2010 might be a decade ago, but I can still recount it like it was yesterday. I was going into my junior year of high school. Over the July 4th holiday weekend, my family and I went to Washington, D.C. for vacation. Whenever we would finish up our sightseeing for the day, my parents would make their way to the hotel bar or restaurant for a happy hour drink before dinner.
As for 16-year-old me, I would put myself in front of a television or computer and catch up on all the NBA news. As a lifelong and devout Knicks fan, I had a stake in this. And I dreamed of seeing LeBron, wearing №23 in the orange and blue, bringing a championship to the World’s Most Famous Arena.
It did appear that the Knicks were certainly going to sign All-Star big-man Amar’e Stoudemire, given the connection between he and head coach Mike D’Antoni from their days together in Phoenix. I crossed my fingers and hoped that it would be enough to lure LeBron to Manhattan too.
But as free agency rolled along, it felt like the Knicks weren’t a serious contender for LeBron’s services. All we kept hearing about was LeBron staying in Cleveland, or going to Chicago or Miami with D-Wade and Chris Bosh. The thought of a superstar “Big 3” joining forces on one team via free agency was frightening.
For most of those first eight days in July 2010, it really felt like Chicago was in the driver’s seat to sign at least two of the stars. We constantly kept hearing about meetings and conversations between the Bulls and the likes of James, Wade, and Bosh.
But what we didn’t know was that the real business was taking place in the shadows. That business started to come into the light on Wednesday, July 7, when Wade and Bosh both committed to the Miami Heat.
At that point, it felt like Chicago’s chances of signing any of the big-name free agents went up in flames. It appeared that LeBron was either going to stay in Cleveland or head to South Beach.
And then, that Wednesday night, as I was driving to a swim meet, I heard the news: LeBron was going to announce his free agency decision live on ESPN on Thursday, July 8th in primetime.
When it was announced that it would take place in Greenwich, Connecticut, the illogical Knicks fan in me perked up. “Is LeBron coming to the Knicks now that he’s making his decision in a town that is only an hour away from New York City? He would never come to a town made up predominantly of Knicks fans and say he wasn’t joining the team!”
The irrational Knicks fan in me got my hopes up once again and began to believe he was coming to The Garden. It would not be the last time that this would happen in my life.
As Thursday went along, the two teams everyone continued to speculate about were Cleveland and Miami. Looking back now, it wasn’t realistic that he was going to come to New York.
Then the moment of truth came at 9:00 p.m. that evening, when LeBron uttered the iconic phrase to poor Jim Gray: “I’m going to take my talents to South Beach and join the Miami Heat.”
The Knicks fan in me, and frankly the NBA fan in me, was livid. I was mad. I was disgusted. I was angry. I was upset. I was furious. I was not happy about LeBron’s decision to form a superstar trio alongside D-Wade and Bosh anywhere other than New York.
It was only made worse by the fact that the Knicks and the Heat had hated one another since the mid-1990’s, when former head coach Pat Riley left New York for Miami. The two teams then formed a bitter playoff rivalry from the late-1990’s through the early-2000’s.
From 1997–2000, the two teams faced each other four times in the playoffs, with the Knicks winning three of the four meetings. But those series’ were iconic for their fights and their physical play.
The concept of three of the game’s best players coming together on one team was so foreign for its time. We had the Boston Celtics’ “Big 3” of Paul Pierce, Kevin Garnett, and Ray Allen that won the 2008 NBA title, but that trio came together via trades. This one, however, was through free agency, and it shook the NBA landscape.
Not to mention, the trio of LeBron, Wade, and Bosh was superior to the triumvirate of Pierce, Garnett, and Allen. Sorry, Celtics fans.
LeBron, D-Wade, Bosh, and the Miami Heat immediately became the villains of the NBA. That only became worse after their introductory press conference/party where they celebrated their arrival to South Beach with fans at the American Airlines Arena and boasted about their intention to win as many championships as possible.
As LeBron notoriously said, “Not 1, not 2, not 3, not 4, not 5, not 6, not 7.” The Heat had arguably become the best team in the league. They had also become the most-hated now too.
Fans were overjoyed at seeing “The Heatles”, especially LeBron, fall short against the Dallas Mavericks in the 2011 NBA Finals. But King James and Miami would clap back at the NBA world with consecutive championships in 2012 and 2013.
The Heat would take apart an extremely-talented, yet young and inexperienced, Oklahoma City Thunder team in the 2012 NBA Finals, before defeating the veteran San Antonio Spurs in one of the greatest NBA Finals’ series of all-time in 2013.
The legacy of “The Decision” can still be felt 10 years later.
Alongside his disappointing performance in the 2011 NBA Finals, his collapse in the 2010 NBA Playoffs, and his controversial comments regarding the NBA’s relationship with China in 2019, “The Decision” is one of the few low points of LeBron’s Hall of Fame career.
The TV special made him look arrogant, cocky, immature, and uncomfortable. It was out of step with the man we know LeBron James to be today.
But, looking back at it, how much can you blame him? He was a 25-year-old superstar being given an hour on ESPN to discuss why he chose the Miami Heat. If I was offered that opportunity to reveal where I was going to attend graduate school, I probably would’ve loved the attention and done the same thing as well.
LeBron certainly doesn’t regret his decision to play for Miami, nor should he. I’ve argued and said for years that LeBron’s four years in South Beach will be the most beneficial to his career. Playing for the Heat was like going to college for LeBron. He grew up, he matured, he learned how to win in the NBA, and he became a better person.
It was part of the reason why, after four seasons, he decided to return to Cleveland in 2014 and rejoined the Cavaliers. His letter, which he wrote via Lee Jenkins in Sports Illustrated, showed how much LeBron had evolved in the past four years.
That was showcased once again in 2018 when LeBron’s agent, Rich Paul, released a simple statement announcing the forward’s decision to move to Los Angeles and sign with the Lakers in free agency.
LeBron deservingly took a lot of lumps and punches for “The Decision.” But he learned from it and he changed. It helped him become the model citizen he is today.
Without “The Decision,” we wouldn’t have had one of the most iconic teams in NBA history and the second-best team of the last decade. Two championships and four consecutive appearances in the NBA Finals for “The Big 3” in South Beach.
The 2010–2014 Miami Heat would’ve been the team of the 2010’s had it not been for what the Golden State Warriors would become on the back-half of the decade.
It was LeBron James and “The Decision” that ushered in the current player empowerment era of the NBA. We’ve had big-name superstars switch teams in free agency or force trades from one team to another in league history, but LeBron’s decision to leave Cleveland for Miami opened the floodgates.
It gave players the power to take control of their respective destinies and maintain leverage over their own careers rather than leave it in the hands of teams.
“The Decision” also gave rise to the era of super teams and star trios coming together and joining forces, a concept that was previously uncommon across the league. Historically, NBA stars typically stayed with one team for their entire career or refused to join up with other stars, as they were more inclined to beat them rather than play alongside them.
But as AAU Basketball has become more prominent across the country, and many NBA players have been going up against each other for years by the time they reach the pro ranks, players are now more inclined to team up and compete alongside their friends.
It also normalized the practice of signing short-term deals rather than long-terms contracts to allow star players to maintain control and leverage over the franchise, as well as to allow them the freedom to move from team to team whenever they please—similar to what LeBron typically has done every four years.
The aforementioned Warriors, who would win three championships and compete in five straight NBA Finals from 2015–2019—four of which came against LeBron during his second tour through Cleveland—have to thank their former rival too for what he did. If it wasn’t for “The Decision,” Kevin Durant probably doesn’t have the precedent or cover to leave Oklahoma City for the Bay Area in 2016 and form one of the greatest NBA teams of all-time.
LeBron has done so much to transform the game of basketball and the NBA, and “The Decision” has been just one of the many ways.
That’s why this July, with no significant free agency news to discuss for the first time in 10 years, feels so weird.
