J.K. Rolling

Author: Jeff Klein

It seems like all we've been hearing about recently in NBA-related news is the hype surrounding LeBron James and his free agency in 2010. When the New York Knicks recently engaged in a salary-shredding series of trades that saw them part with two of their highest paid players, Jamal Crawford and Zack Randolph, sports analysts inevitablybegan voicing in one form or another this simple assertion: the Knicks were freeing up the necessary cap space to snag LeBron in 2010.

This is almost certainly true. I mean, why else would GM Donnie Walsh trade away two of the Knicks' most talented players, thereby almost assuring that they will be playoff-irrelevant for the next two years? He's sacrificing present success in order to land the big prize a few years down the road. And while the majority of casual Knicks fans are salivating over the prospect of seeing LeBron as a mainstay in the Big Apple, this Knicks fan shares the opposing view. I don't want LeBron on the Knicks.

Personally, I think LeBron is overrated, which is an assertion anathema to most basketball enthusiasts. But hear me out. He's an extremely erratic shooter (did you watch the first six games of last year's Eastern Conference Semifinals versus the Celtics?), an average defender at best, and often makes the rest of his team's offense stagnant while he goes one-on-one against three defenders. And as my buddy Spencer McIntosh so accurately put it in his blog, "Ferocious dunks and leaping ability do not encompass 100% of the package." In other words, a player must possess more than flash in order to help his team win.

I'm not saying he's not an incredibly talented basketball player, just that listening to his adoring fans talk about him, you'd think he was better than MJ and Kobe combined. He's not even close to being better than either of those two.

But this isn't the only reason I'm against LeBron coming to the Big Apple. I don't want him in a Knicks uniform because, to me, he's not a Knick. He's a Cleveland Cavalier. When a franchise player spends a significant period of time with one team, building up a relationship with his teammates and fan base, he basically becomes inextricably linked with that team. In the process, fans of rival teams grow to hate that player (of course, I say hate in the context of athletic competition, not as a person). Do you think diehard Spurs fans, after watching their team battle time and time again against Kobe's Lakers in the playoffs, would want to see Kobe head south to San Antonio? How about the Maverick faithful - are they just itching to lure D-Wade to Dallas, after he pulverized the Mavs (or was the beneficiary of every single foul call; take your pick) in the 2006 NBA Finals? I say "no" and "no". Better yet, let's take an example from the Knicks themselves. Flash back to the mid-1990s: do you think die-hard Knicks fans would have been open to Knick-killer Reggie Miller donning the orange and blue if he had become a free agent during that time? Please. Reggie, for all his talent - and because of all his talent - was the player Knicks fans loved to hate.

Even though I personally think it would be selfish of LeBron to jump ship and abandon his fans in Cleveland after all their unwavering support of him, I understand why he would leave. He wants to be in the spotlight. He wants more fame. He wants to go to a city where he'll be more marketable. New York provides all of that. So I think it's likely he will become a Knick in 2010.

I just don't want it to happen.