LeBron JamesSouth Beach or South Russell? Bikinis or blankets? Surfboards or snow shovels?
For 99.9 percent of NBA basketball players, those aren’t even choices. They’re jokes. You’re about to sign a four-year, $88 million max contract and you decide you’d rather earn it with the Cleveland Cavaliers than the Miami Heat?
Frosty the Snowman wouldn’t leave the Heat for the Cavs. He’d just buy a lot of dry ice.
But LeBron James didn’t grow up in the Sun Belt. He grew up in the Rust Belt of Akron, Ohio, where times have been tough for decades — where, in his words, “Our community, which has struggled so much, needs all the talent it can get.”
So on Friday, a little more than four years after his televised and criticized “Decision” severed seven years with the Cavs to join the Heat in search of his first NBA championship ring — James proved you can go home again.