One decision can change everything. Just ask LeBron James. Now you can ask Kevin Durant as well.
Six years ago today, LeBron James appeared on ESPN for The Decision, a televised sit-down between the NBA superstar and Jim Gray, who had pitched the idea to both James and the network, to discuss his plans for the upcoming season. If you’re a basketball fan over the age of 10, I probably don’t have to tell you what happened.
After seven years with the Cleveland Cavaliers, a team whose identity had been co-opted by James himself, LeBron took his talents to South Beach in search of “the best opportunity to win and to win for multiple years.”
The reaction was 10 fire emojis before we even knew what that meant. Many found the way that LeBron gut-punched Cleveland on national television just too cruel. Others chided James as a traitor (or “trader,” depending on your grammar) and sellout, forgoing loyalty and honor to become a mercenary. A hired hand for some other team. He was a liar and a quitter and he wasn’t welcome back in Cleveland ever again. Those who weren’t already rooting against him started to and the NBA’s golden boy was now its biggest villain.
Hell, even Kevin Durant threw shade at LeBron with a tweet that in no way would ever come back to bite him…
Now everybody wanna play for the heat and the Lakers? Let's go back to being competitive and going at these peoples!
— Kevin Durant (@KDTrey5) July 16, 2010
If someone fell into a coma that night and didn’t wake up until last month, you’d understand their confusion as they saw LeBron in a Cavaliers uniform hoisting that coveted Larry O’Brien NBA Championship Trophy, a shockwave that briefly turned Cleveland, Ohio into the sports capital of the nation.
In reality, James did go to Miami where he and the Heat went to four NBA Finals and won two championships. He didn’t meet the lofty goal he had set out for himself and the team, but if we accept that sustained excellence coupled with winning multiple championships is a measure of success, then yes, LeBron’s tenure in South Florida was a success. So much so that he felt comfortable enough to leave and return to his initial mission of bringing a title to Believeland.
Six years after The Decision, you can’t help but feel as though history is about to repeat itself. Kevin Durant, who spent nine seasons with the Oklahoma City Thunder, a franchise whose entire identity had been wrapped around Durant’s aura since its creation, decided to spurn them in a surprise free agency move to join the high-powered Golden State Warriors in an attempt to simplify his quest for an NBA Title.
Just like that, Durant is the NBA’s great villain now. He’s been vilified up and down social media, on sports talk radio, and every TV debate show you can think of. He’s the traitor (or trader) now. He’s the carpetbagger. He’s got no loyalty. He now stands exactly where LeBron stood six years ago.
VIDEO: Man calls Kevin Durant a 'trader,' burns his jersey. https://t.co/0L33Ojh6Jr pic.twitter.com/UvzTYtlwuk
— theScore (@theScore) July 4, 2016
The truly amazing part is that six years later, LeBron is a conquering hero. In professional wrestling parlance, you could argue the Warriors came into the NBA Finals as the faces, the “good guys,” and LeBron’s Cavs were the heels, the bad guys. By the end of the series, that narrative was officially flipped. LeBron completed his face-turn and became the savior Cleveland always hoped he would be while the Warriors were left to lick their wounds, deemed a bit too cocky and bit too distracted only a year from being the feel-good story of the league.
So in a way, LeBron completed his character arc just in time for Durant to take it over. Call it a remake or a reboot of the age-old story. In Act One, everyone loves you as your ascension signals great things to come. In Act Two, our hero makes a harrowing decision that changes the way we think about them and their motives. In Act Three, they either make good on the thing we originally liked about them or they prove our disdain right.
Of course, this is also ridiculous. LeBron was not a villain for bolting Cleveland for Miami, except in the eyes of Cavaliers fans. It’s been said a million times but James made a business decision. Business decisions don’t always feel good in the world of sports but that’s because we assign unrealistic motivations and qualities to professional athletes. We ask them to hold high things like loyalty and self-sacrifice even though we would never put those things ahead of self-preservation in our own lives. We’d do what we thought was best for ourselves, too.
You don’t have to be a Las Vegas bookie to know the odds are high that James and Durant will meet in the NBA Finals next season. You can be sure that the NBA is banking on it. There’s so many storylines at play if and when that does happen but just the fact that a superstar playing in that series will be playing with his reputation on the line and that player isn’t LeBron James seems downright astonishing. Especially if we consider where LeBron’s reputation was six years ago.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvgD9HNTMkM
Back then, LeBron was He Who Would Be King but also He Who Had No Championships And Sold Out In Search Of Just One. That he was able to return to Cleveland and eventually reclaim his seat on its throne is a minor miracle. This is a guy whose jersey was being burned and whose former boss was penning hate letters to him. James somehow got back in all of their good graces. Amazing what winning can accomplish.
So for those who say Durant has forever tarnished his legacy or ruined all of the goodwill his career has created, there’s a very simple, very obvious example of how that’s completely untrue staring you right in the face. Its name is LeBron James. And chances are, he’ll be staring Kevin Durant right in the face come next June as the latter attempts to make it down the path to where the former currently reigns.
The Decision, as it turns out, is simply the beginning.
