July 8, 2010.
Too late for Cousin Jeff: Season-ticket holders had to renew and pay for their seats long before the free-agency period began on July 1.
Too late for Mike Brown, too. Gilbert fires him despite Danny Ferry"s objections, and when Gilbert makes plain that he, not Ferry, will choose Brown"s successor-that, in fact, the owner wants more of a say-so in running his team-Ferry resigns. He is replaced by his lieutenant Chris Grant, who has never been a GM before, but who also holds the distinct advantage of not being Danny Ferry-not the $30 million albatross that hung for a decade from the Cavaliers" neck, not the benighted Dookie who spent five years and hundreds of millions of dollars more failing to win a championship with the NBA"s best player.
Surely by the time Ferry decides to quit, he already has seen LeBron"s Larry King interview, featuring the following slip of the tongue and semi-revelation: "The team I go to, or whatever the case may be, will have an opportunity to win championships in multiple years and not just because of LeBron James," James tells King.
Old and worn as Larry is, he"s still sharp enough to catch the tell, the giveaway: "The team I go to . . ."
So Larry does what Larry has done since the days when Major Bowes had a radio talent show: he lobs LeBron a softball-"Does Cleveland have an edge?"-and James says, "Absolutely. Because this city, these fans, have given me a lot in these seven years. For me, it"s comfortable. I"ve got a lot of memories here, but it"s going to be a very interesting summer and I"m looking forward to it."
Golly. Thanks for the pig ear, you worthless motherf.u.c.ker.
James has cut off all direct contact with the Cavs. Won"t even take Dan Gilbert"s calls. Three weeks ago, the Cavs were up 21 against the Celtics. Three f.u.c.king weeks. Now the Cavs have no coach, a rookie GM, and no firm reason to believe that LeBron James will ever play another game in a Cavs uniform.
Bad enough? You"ve got to be kidding. Dan Gilbert goes rushing after Tom Izzo, the coach at Michigan State, Gilbert"s alma mater-a man with no NBA experience at all. Izzo bites down hard-who wouldn"t, for $6 million per annum?-but he"d like a word with LeBron before he officially takes the job. Nope. Which, when you ponder it-James is unwilling even to speak with the man the Cavs owner is hoping will become the team"s coach-is eloquent beyond words, a f.u.c.k-you as clear and direct as any prospective head coach, and any franchise, could hope to hear from any athlete.
Izzo decides that he"s better off preaching defense and loyalty to teenagers who might not have realized that their coach was on the brink of breaching a deal at MSU that ran until 2016-and so Gilbert signs Byron Scott. Scott has coached two New Jersey Nets teams to the Finals-they lost both-and won three championship rings from his playing days with the Showtime Lakers.
It"s a brilliant hire, truly. Scott was a big part, along with Magic and Kareem, of those Lakers teams coached by Pat Riley, and he won his rings playing for his hometown fans. He"s tough, he"s confident, and he"s all grown up. He"s willing to take the Cavs job without any a.s.surance that LeBron will stay.
A genius move, absolutely perfect in every way save the only way that now matters: it comes a year too late, or two. For had Byron Scott coached the Cavs against Orlando in 2009 or Boston this season, the Cavs-and LeBron in particular-would"ve had a battle-tested leader on the sideline, in the locker room, and in their faces, to steady and support them and, if need be, back them down. Scott"s three rings with the Lakers confer all the NBA gravitas, and command all the NBA respect that Mike Brown"s clipboard and Danny Ferry"s Duke degree do not.
Scott drops by LeBron"s skills camp in Akron a few days before The Decision. He stays an hour or so. No, he tells the media the next day, he didn"t speak with LeBron.
Untrue.
Scott saw James and said, "Hey, LeBron."
LeBron said, "Hey, Coach."
Nothing more?
"Nope," says Scott.
Seems strange.
"I didn"t go there to woo him."
No. Of course not.
When I left Cleveland in 1984-I"d finished, at the age of thirty-one, a B.A. at Cleveland State University, the Harvard of Euclid Avenue, and got into the University of Iowa"s Writers" Workshop-I always figured I"d be back. I"d spent a year or so in Los Angeles in the early 1970s, three years in Austin in the late "70s, and always I came back to Cleveland to live. When my first wife got into medical school in Iowa after my two years at the workshop, and then into the University of Pennsylvania for her residency, I still thought of Cleveland as home, still came back for the Tribe"s last series at the Stadium, for Opening Day at Jacobs Field, and for Cavs playoff games, and to watch the Indians in the World Series. Before my son, G.o.d love him, ever set foot in Yankee or Shea stadium, I took him to Cleveland to watch his first major-league baseball games.
My first feature for GQ-a.s.signed in 1991 by the editor who"s still my boss today-was the story of Kevin Mackey, the Cleveland State basketball coach who had a wife and children in Shaker Heights and a double life as an inner-city crackhead. Over and over I wrote about Cleveland and Clevelanders, and I"d go back to the city, find a room in a downtown hotel with a view of the lake, and sleep like a baby in the womb. n.o.body in the city knew who I was, knew or gave a s.h.i.t what I was writing or what I had written, and that was fine by me. The places I wanted most in all the world to see-the ruins of League Park, where Speaker, Ruth, and Chapman played; the art museum lagoon, where I once had pledged my love to a girl by throwing my first handgun into the muck; the softball field behind my junior high school, where I had jacked a drive to right-center field that cleared the tall fence and landed on the tennis courts beyond-all were there.
I didn"t come to see people. I avoided everyone, including my mother. People wanted things from me. Cleveland gave. It wasn"t nostalgia; it was plasma. It was who I was. Here was the diner where I sat over a plate of runny eggs after finally-finally-getting laid. Here was where I brought a tumbler of Jack Daniel"s to my Cla.s.sics in Translation final exam and, when I realized I couldn"t write a f.u.c.king word in the blue book, bargained with the professor for that semester"s C. Here was where I walked into drugstores with forged prescriptions and walked out with a hundred quaaludes. Here was where I left the shoe store where I worked with the day"s deposit and a stolen credit card, headed for the airport, and caught a flight to London. Here was where I walked in on some a.s.shole who"d broken into my place to steal the drugs I was dealing and tore an ear half off his head.
On the morning of July 8 I get a call from Joe Gabriele.
"Don"t worry," Joe says. "He"s staying."
You know that? Don"t f.u.c.k with me, Joe.
"I"m just saying. You know how when he gets fouled hard he goes down and acts like he"s hurt? This is the same thing-he"s got everyone right where he wants them, thinking they know what he"s going to do. He"s going to fool them all. He"s staying."
I don"t believe it. I don"t even believe that Joe believes it. The reporters closest to James and Maverick Carter, Chris Broussard and Stephen A. Smith, say it"s going to be Miami. I believe them. And by now-I"ve been blogging LeBron"s free-agency countdown on Esquire.com and Deadspin-I"m too numb to hope, almost past caring. Almost? Never.
When showtime rolls around, I"m in the rocker. Lisa"s on the couch. My son is over on Douglas Street, playing group tag-"Manhunt" they call it. I"m well pleased with the boy, kinehora. I don"t want him sitting here on a summer night, watching this nonsense, don"t want him to see the old man sickened and enraged one more time by my love for Cleveland sports.
When I see the footage of LeBron with the little boys and girls, I am both sickened and enraged. Idi Amin: I"m watching LeBron James, the last king of Cleveland, using children as props, as ornaments, as moral deodorant.
You want to stay, wh.o.r.e, stay. You want to go, wh.o.r.e, go. But spare us an hour of ESPN eunuchs lapping your s.c.r.o.t.u.m while you void your bowels and bladder on the only fans who"ll ever love you like a member of the tribe.
Or do you need this charade? Is it fun and exciting?
Nice shirt, a.s.shole. Nice neck beard.
Wow, I"m so ancient I remember Jim Gray before he was a sock puppet waving a "Will Fluff for Food" sign.
South Beach? When did the Heat move to South Beach?
What a grotesque and bloated parody of a man you turned out to be. Nothing but a b.u.m. That"s the mot juste: b.u.m.
I watch every minute. Every second. I"m sorry it doesn"t go on longer. I want to hear this narcissistic a.s.shole refer to himself in the third person a few more times. I want to hear him calling himself a "twenty-five-year-old man" again, too. I want to hear more about the dream he had this morning, and about talking to his mama; hey, if he goes for another hour or two, he might even mention, at least once, Savannah Brinson-his high school sweetheart and his sons" mother.
I also want another hour of live shots from Cleveland, especially the two squad cars parked, lights flashing, beneath the Banner, bulwarks against the pillaging horde. Someone needs to get on the radio and tell them that the horde left a long time ago, took its talents to the suburbs and beyond, and took with it all the disposable income and every vestige of hope.
"I"m sorry," Lisa says when it finally ends. "That was horrible."
So strange. I know this feeling in my bones-Cleveland lost-but there was no game. And this, this is worse. What the h.e.l.l are they going to do? Gilbert isn"t going to stay in Cleveland if the team starts losing money every year. The Browns are clueless. The Indians have lost their way, along with most of their fans. What"s the city going to do if it starts losing teams?
"You want a handjob?" she asks.
Eh. I"m really not in the mood. I have to post something about this train wreck tomorrow, and I have to think about what to think before I can write.
"Why don"t you just get your b.u.t.t up on the bed?"
Yes, ma"am. G.o.d forbid that I should be the first man in human history to say no to a handjob.
I see a prima facie case that James contrived years ago to join Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh in 2010. They entered the NBA at the same time, became teammates and pals playing for Team USA in 2006, and each signed a three-year contract extension in 2007 that would enable them to become free agents together.
I also give James credit for being savvy enough to keep that option open.
Savvy is as savvy does. I discern the thumbprint of a cabal-not the tinhorn Rubber City rube posse led by Maverick Carter, but the Creative Arts Agency, whose client list includes James, Bosh, and Wade-yet the fact is, LeBron James at age fifteen betrayed his own Akron community by going to a predominantly white Catholic high school rather than playing for Buchtel, a public school populated mainly by African Americans. It was a hugely controversial, carefully calculated move, and an early warning that his notion of loyalty was fluid rather than fixed, and utterly self-serving.
Likewise, I can argue that the Miami Heat, in the persons of Pat Riley and Dwyane Wade, are guilty of tampering, of illegal contact with James before he entered free agency, but the fact is, no major move goes down in the NBA"s flesh bazaar without back-channel negotiations. That"s part and parcel of the meat-peddling milieu enveloping ballers far less blessed than LeBron James as soon as they"re old enough to help an AAU shaman build his stable of pimpable talent. That"s what enables leeches like William "World Wide Wes" Wesley to act the playa. At any level, amateur or pro, prizefighting is a less dishonest sport.
I"ll take all of the above and, above all, this: LeBron James is no naif, no victim, n.o.body"s fool but his own. Same with Dan Gilbert, me, and every Cleveland fan above the age of consent who believed that what James said counted more than what he did. For years, James let folks far and wide know that he would be available when he became available. He saw teams strip themselves of talent for two seasons to gain enough payroll s.p.a.ce to woo him. He bade them parade to Cleveland in their suits, while he wore shorts and a T-shirt to the meetings where they trotted out their PowerPoint charts and pleaded for his favor. James didn"t make them beg; he let them.
And no other franchise or city groveled like poor Cleveland and the Cavaliers; none had so much to lose. The Cavs put people at key overpa.s.ses and downtown street corners to hold signs printed with "Mission" and "Community" and "Family" in hope of catching the King"s eye as he pa.s.sed on his way from Bath Township to his free-agent pitches in downtown Cleveland. A "We Are the World"type video featured the governor of Ohio, while the Cleveland Orchestra played a free concert on Public Square in the heart of downtown on the evening of July 1 with fireworks, a special musical tribute to James, and the word "HOME" spelled out in lights on the office tower across the way.
Dan Gilbert put half a million dollars into his pitch. There was a heart-wrenching video filled with plain folks-black and white, old and young-just talking about what James meant to them and to Cleveland. And there was a cartoon video full of fart jokes and lampoonery, wherein Pat Riley, stripped to a Speedo and gleaming with baby oil, invited LeBron to strip down and wrestle.
In the end, Riley needed no videos. Riley brought what money can"t buy-a bag full of his championship rings, in silver, in gold, in platinum-shoved it across the table to LeBron, and said, "Hey, try one on."
The Catch. The Drive. The Fumble. The Shot. The Decision. One of these things does not belong. One of these things was an evil man"s willful act, and worse. The Wh.o.r.e of Akron knows full well he has stomped on Cleveland"s soul.
He doesn"t care. To care, he would need a soul of his own-a soul and a sense of good and evil. The Lubavitcher Rebbe, no hoops fan, defines evil as good"s absence. The Decision: evil. Not pure-nothing human ever is pure-but evil nonetheless.
Just sports? Fine, so it"s not war, or plague, or famine. But evil doesn"t get a pa.s.s just because it hasn"t literally murdered the innocent.
I am ready to give up, to write off the season past as a romp in sports journalism fantasy camp. I"ve seen enough: enough defeat, enough behind-the-curtain ugliness, enough civic suffering. I can"t help the Cavs or Cleveland or myself. So I won"t live to see another champion; so I"ll die a froth-mouthed fan: So what? Enough. Dayenu.
Then, inside me, something shakes awake. Overnight.
It is not merely Dan Gilbert"s letter to Cavs fans, a Comic Sans yowl of betrayal, mingling scorn, curse, and random syntax to near-Wagnerian effect.
It is not merely the Heat"s welcome party for the Big 3, an event that resembles nothing so much as Sat.u.r.day night at the Crazy Horse, with Stormy, Windy, and Princess each riding her own pole.
It is not merely the communal lap dance that follows, with the Wh.o.r.e of Akron telling the Miami mob that winning will be so easy that Pat Riley can suit up and play point guard, that he, King James, has come to deliver championship after championship-not four, not five, not six, not seven-on and on until his braggartry is washed under by the roar of a sea of sun-baked cretins who fancy themselves fans.
It is all these things, and it is more than all these things; my debt to Cleveland and to all who suffer as I suffer has come due.
What the h.e.l.l. I"m taking my talents to South Beach, too.
Chapter Six.
Chief Wahoo and the Wh.o.r.e of Akron Near midnight, the plane circles over the Atlantic on its final descent and I see one moon fat in the black-blue sky and another shining up from the dark water. The city skyline shimmers, dotted with light. Gorgeous, all of it.
I haven"t seen Miami in ten years. On the ride from the airport, the early autumn air is thick and soupy; downtown rises on the horizon, so white, so glittering, so clean. It is a world apart from Cleveland. Or New Jersey.
Tomorrow is Media Day for the Heat. I"ve got an hour with Dwyane Wade beforehand for an Esquire fashion spread. This took weeks to negotiate-the team is in full lock-down mode, and the media relations people have alerted Wade"s publicist that I"m writing a book.
And not just a book. "We are aware that Scott is writing an unauthorized book about LeBron James, so any questions about him is completely off-limits," is how the publicist put it in an e-mail to my editor. I"m unsure which tickles me more, the subject-verb problem or the "unauthorized." I"ve spent the entire summer trying to convince the NBA office that since I"ve been a journalist for twenty-plus years for major national magazines, and since I have a book deal with a respected publisher, I might be worthy of the same credential the league grants to the yobbos who duct-tape ESPN"s power cords to the arena floor.
No dice. Why? The reasons change. There is some mention of a policy, but no actual policy. The man in charge takes umbrage when I suggest that the whole process seems dishonest. His name is Tim Frank, and he is a senior vice president of the NBA. I know-surely Tim must also know-my request is nothing illegitimate. But The Decision has tilted the NBA"s media axis: ESPN, having abandoned all pretense of honest journalism by giving LeBron total control of the network to revel in solipsistic lunacy, now has a Superteam to pimp, and its spanking new Heat Index will devote more resources to covering the Heat than the rest of the league"s teams combined.
It makes business sense: ABC/ESPN and the NBA are multibillion-dollar bed partners, with the league as the submissive bottom. The Miami Heat are going to be the new face of the brand. An ESPN reporter, Ric Bucher, is working on a LeBron book, too, and while he doesn"t sport a Chief Wahoo tattoo, he does boast an NBA credential.
My only loophole requires that I work with the Heat media relations office, where another Tim-Tim Donovan-lets me know straightaway that "the fact that the book you are planning is not something LeBron signed off on does not play in your favor." I am free, however, to apply for credentials on an a.s.signment-by-a.s.signment basis, provided that an Esquire editor details each a.s.signment to Tim Donovan"s satisfaction.
Out the hotel room window early the next morning, waiting for the sweetest three words in the English language-"room service breakfast"-a line of clouds scuds low across the blue horizon. Tugs pull a huge cruise ship out of the bay and toward the sea. I can see a white crescent slice of the arena where the Heat play. It"s a pretty picture, a glorious morning. Miami, I decide, is fine by me.
This may be the truth talking, or this may be the Vicodin. h.e.l.l, it may be both.
Fifteen years of living sober; fifteen years without a drink or a hit or a line; fifteen years avoiding all pain meds. In 1999, after a root ca.n.a.l, I filled a scrip for Oxycontin syrup, took a teaspoon of it over the kitchen sink, and when I felt it land in a warm rush pouring down as slow and sweet as honey, I tipped the rest of the bottle down the drain. Not because I worried I might relapse, but because I knew I would.
But the root ca.n.a.l didn"t hurt as bad as my back does now. I"d slipped a disk three weeks before, on a Friday night-just bent over wrong and felt the lightning rip across the width of me. When I managed to slide downstairs, humped in two, limping, my son saw me and started to cry. Sorry, kid. Sorry you didn"t know me when I was younger, tougher, and wholly unfit to be anybody"s dad.
Lisa wanted me to go to the ER to get an injection. f.u.c.k that. I slept in the rocker over the weekend, called my doctor, and he phoned in prescriptions for Valium to relax the spasms and Vicodin for the pain. I couldn"t crawl to the c.r.a.pper, let alone travel to Miami, without meds.
I"m taking half-doses, calling or texting Lisa every time I drop a pill, not because I"m worried that I"ll relapse, but because I know I will. Never had a Vicodin in my life-we had Percodan back in the day-but with the very first one it"s as if I never stepped away from the warm glow of the high. Put another log on the hearth. Stir the soup and heat me up a big bowl. I"m home, motherf.u.c.ker.
Sausage and eggs and a bagel and lox and a large pot of joe, and by the grace of G.o.d, I manage the drive to the arena without plunging into Biscayne Bay. I meet up with D-Wade at the team"s offices inside the arena. He"s wearing a black T-shirt with "NERD" in big white letters.
He seems friendly and relaxed. I"ve always liked him, as a fan. I liked the way Wade looked at LeBron at the moment when James started yapping about how easy winning was going to be: sideways, with his eyebrows c.o.c.ked, a look that said, Slow down, son, I"ve won a championship. It wasn"t easy.
Thanks for making the time, I say.
"Oh, no," Wade says. "You as well. Thank you."
It"s a beautiful city. I get it.
He laughs. "You get it," he says, then laughs again. "It"s a nice city."
I"m from Cleveland.
"Oh. You"re from Cleveland."
The Q ain"t gonna be the same, Dwyane.
Again he laughs. But he"s nervous now, not smiling. We"ll get to the standard stuff soon enough. And I"m not going to ask him any questions about LeBron. I"m a man of my word. But I have a couple of bones to pick.
Being a fan is ridiculous, I say. When you"re a fan, you"re stupid. Guys come and go and you"re the idiot whose heart gets broke.
"I understand," he says. "I"m a fan of the Bears, not an easy thing. Sometimes you just get angry at guys-I understand that. My time in Miami will come and go. Another guy"s gonna come in, but that fan stays the same. There"s fans in the arena now watching me who"ll be here 30 years from now watching someone else. And if they haven"t won another championship in the next 30 years, they"re gonna be feeling it, and I"ll be sitting back like, Well, I won mine. I understand that."
Hating Dwyane Wade won"t be easy. Doesn"t drink, doesn"t smoke, no tattoos.
No tattoos?
"I went one day when I got to college. When I was growing up, we couldn"t wear hats, we couldn"t wear earrings, my father said no tattoos. So I started wearing hats, and I got my ears pierced, and I said I"m going to go to the tattoo parlor. I walked in there and I walked right out. It just wasn"t me-and I knew it wasn"t me. It would"ve been forced."
Wade"s summer has been packed-recruiting James and Bosh, flying back and forth to Chicago, where he was locked in legal combat with his ex for custody of their two sons, filming phone and shoe ads, shooting hoops and noshing shrimp at the White House.
"It was just like a big picnic on the lawn. Carmelo, LeBron, Chris Paul, Magic Johnson, Alonzo, Bill Russell-everyone sitting out there talking, Luther Vandross playing in the background. Just a great vibe."
Bill f.u.c.king Russell. I don"t say this to Wade, but Russell"s book Second Wind ought to be required reading for every NBA player and executive, not to mention every so-called journalist covering the league. Publicly addressing issues-s.e.x, drugs, and, above all, the racism of American sport and society-with ferocious honesty and singular insight, Russell is the truest prophet pro sports ever produced, so wise that he long ago chose to absent himself in toto from the meaningless screaming cl.u.s.terf.u.c.k of the national discourse, sporting and otherwise.
You know Bill Russell?