Wojo: Inside look at LeBron's free-agent coup

[dbatesman]

http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/news?slug=aw-heatfreeagency071610

LeBron pissed in Wojo's Cheerios at some point, but he's still the second best guy covering this story, and this is the first comprehensive look at what the hell happened.

Inside look at LeBron

[dbatesman]

(continued)

The New Jersey Nets – with owner Mikhail Prokhorov and minority partner Jay-Z – were the first team to make a formal presentation to James at the offices of his LRMR marketing company in downtown Cleveland on July 1. This was the meeting that most intrigued James, because he had never been in the room with Prokhorov, the Russian billionaire and new Nets owner. This was a self-made global tycoon, different than the rest of the owners, and this surely intrigued James.

Prokhorov was long, trim and athletic, and at 6-foot-9 inches able to look James in the eyes when greeting him for the first time. The Nets made a pointed, flashy presentation on the franchise’s eventual move to a new arena in Brooklyn and delivered a creative, if not embellished, explanation of how Prokhorov held a international blueprint for James on how to catapult him someday into the billionaire athlete that he always wanted to be.

For James, the problem with back-to-back presentations was his short attention span. Cavaliers coaches had always tried to keep film sessions short because James would drift away and lose interest. As the New York Knicks followed the Nets by repeating those themes with an array of power points and charts about accumulating wealth, James drifted in and out of focus. Later, James would tell Jay-Z that parts of New York’s presentation felt too redundant to New Jersey’s.

In this free-agent push for James, the Nets were something of a wild card, largely because of his close relationship with Jay-Z. In so many ways, James wanted to emulate the music mogul’s platform. In pitching the Nets, who had won only 12 games, Jay-Z kept reminding LeBron that he cared too much about his own brand to ever associate it with something unworthy. The Nets were going to be a force, he promised. With a partnership together, they could own New York and someday the sporting world.

At the start of free agency, the Nets erected a 127-foot billboard of Prokhorov and Jay-Z across from Madison Square Garden. Knicks owner James Dolan was irate, called Jay-Z and told him the mural intimidated his employees.

As it started to get back to Jay-Z that the Nets were trailing to the Heat and Bulls, a Nets official close to ownership – against the wishes of several peers – hatched a plan to leak the notes of a Prokhorov staff meeting to a media outlet. The leaked notes indicated that Prokhorov believed James’ brand would be diminished as part of a three-star team in Miami. What’s more, the notes also indicated what great respect Prokhorov had for Maverick Carter.

The Bulls still believed they were strongly in the bidding for James. They met him on July 2, and for all the discussion later about the belief that Chicago wouldn’t give jobs and access to members of James’ inner circle, the issue had never been raised with team executives.

For everything the Bulls tried to sell – from owner Jerry Reinsdorf to GM Gar Forman to coach Tom Thibodeau – there had been one thing that troubled James’ about the Bulls pitch: Derrick Rose never called and tried to recruit him.

Chicago officials never directly requested Rose to reach out with a call, and the young point guard felt James could’ve always reached out to him had he wanted to discuss the possibility of playing together. James needed to be courted, needed to be wooed and apparently it surprised him there was a star who wasn’t falling over himself to do that.

On the eve of the Bulls’ meeting with James, Forman and vice president John Paxson requested and received a second visit with Wade within 24 hours in Chicago. They met for a couple hours in the office of Wade’s agent, Henry Thomas. Chicago believed it needed badly to emerge out of the meeting with a commitment from Wade to take to James in Cleveland. The Bulls could still make a couple of moves to position them further under the cap and sign two maximum salary players.

Without James committed to joining him in Miami, Wade hadn’t completely let go of the Bulls as a bargaining chip. He knew Bosh would come with him, but LeBron still hadn’t told him that he was going to sign with Miami.

Nevertheless, Riley’s presentation on July 3 pushed James closer to committing than ever. Riley never did pitch James on his own return to coaching, and yet bringing those five championship rings into the meeting were his way of selling James on the fact that Riles’ prints would be all over the team. No other basketball executive in the process could tell James they understood what a title team needed, what it looked like and how they had already done it like Riley could. Riley had such credibility, such presence and he completely captivated James.

Want the best talent? It’s here. Want a Hall of Fame coach? He’s upstairs, waiting for your arrival. Nevertheless, Riley had backed far away from a news conference at season’s end when he suggested he would be willing to return to the bench should a free agent deem it a deal-breaker to sign with the Heat. For James, it wasn’t. Wade had sold him on Erik Spoelstra, and Wade didn’t want Riley hovering over this coach the way he had Stan Van Gundy before taking over on the title run in 2006.

Perhaps Riley could always be seduced to the bench, but he has privately told people he has come to cherish his ability to escape to his Malibu home for a few days here and there in the season. In a lot of ways, the grind no longer appeals to him and he’s wanted to give Spoelstra, his longtime apprentice and understudy, every chance to succeed.

Nevertheless, the pressure on Spoelstra to win a championship in 2011 promises to be immense. To keep his job, he’ll probably have to win it all, especially because Riley has his eye on Doc Rivers to someday coach the Heat. Rivers has one year left on his Celtics contract, and has been heavily affected by the distance between him and his family still living Orlando.

Riley never sold any coach to James in the meeting, but the one sitting next to him. Yet, James understood that Riley ultimately had no loyalty to anything but winning.

Wade wasn’t allowed to recruit for the Heat before the end of the NBA Finals, because he was still a Heat employee. Yet before the end of the Finals, there were two June meetings that involved Wade and members of James’ inner circle – one in Ohio and another in Chicago. The NBA doesn’t seem interested in pursuing a tampering probe, but a senior NBA official wants the league to investigate whether Riley promised James employment and benefits to members of his camp.

“The bigger issue is salary-cap circumvention,” one top NBA front-office executive told Yahoo!. “You can’t promise jobs or preferential services outside of a contract or a job for a friend. If that’s part of the deal, it’s a violation.”

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The way James lost to Boston in the Eastern Conference semifinals turned out to be a boon to the Heat. The pressure was on James to start winning titles and Riley understood this was playing into his favor. The criticism of failing to win a title weighed on James, and Wade worked him over on it. All that would fade away with the Heat, and it wouldn’t be a matter of winning a single title but rather how many they would line up.

James, Wade and Bosh talked on the telephone late on July 6. Wade had gone back to Miami and met with Riley and Heat owner, Micky Arison, and was ready to formally commit to staying. He had Bosh in his pocket, and now they just needed James to make the move with them. They hung up the phone late that night and thought James was prepared to make the jump with them.

Wade and Bosh made public their choices on July 7 and waited for word that would soon quietly come to them: LeBron was on his way to Miami, the greatest coup in free-agent history complete. Later that day, Carter was on the phone with free agent Mike Miller telling him that James was going to Miami and that he needed to join them as a sharpshooter playing off the three stars.

Back in Akron, James still wanted to go through his live hourlong television show on July 8 to announce his decision. This had been Maverick Carter’s big idea, his production, and still people around him worried about the fallout in Cleveland. Several friends told James this was a bad idea to do to his hometown, that leaving the Cavaliers live on national television would make this a public-relations disaster for him.

James didn’t seem to agree, didn’t think it made a difference. Mad was mad, he thought. He would take a beating, but it would subside and people would love him again in Cleveland. The TV event had delivered hope to the Cavaliers that they would keep James because they never believed he would go on air and open himself to such a visceral reaction.

Better than anyone, they knew LeBron James could sometimes be so unaware of the world outside his own needs, his own yes men. Nearly two years later, the whispers in the back of the bus rolling through Beijing had become the loudest statement in free-agency history. The telephone call to the Cleveland Cavaliers came minutes before the 9 p.m. show, and somehow the news still shocked them. LeBron James was leaving, and the truth finally washed over owner Dan Gilbert and his front office: James had been gone a long time. They just never wanted to believe it.

[RutgersJetFan]

For as gifted as James was, Krzyzewski and Colangelo subscribed to a belief that with Kobe Bryant joining the national team in 2007, they could win a gold medal in ’08 with or without LeBron James.

Said during the Spain game and I'll believe it to the day I die. The US loses to Gasol and Co without Kobe in 2008.

[Bruce Banner]

Too Much Too Soon disease.

Jordan was a McDonald's All American in high school but really wasn't a big star despite that. He came on strong at the end of his high school and college careers and came into the NBA as quietly as possible for someone with the talent to be the best of all time. It helped him. Putting the spotlight on a 15yo isn't good for his character.

[greenerdaze]

Putting the spotlight on a 15yo isn't good for his character.

... doesn't hold true for everyone. Depends on the mindset of the 15-year-old.