The Day(s) LeBron James Killed the NBA: A Living Narrative

LeBron James was supposed to be a savior of sorts to the NBA when he entered the league.

I bought the hype wholesale. He was incredible in high school, the kind of player that you just know will capitalize on the talents he was given. Maybe not all at once, but eventually. The raw athlete who you are excited just to watch grow. Not the kind of person who you expect to also detach you from all of that excitement and hype by himself.

He became the greatest star of the information era and a statistical phenomenon. He, for the most part, kept to himself.

But he killed the NBA when he made the "decision."

Some feel it's impact was overblown, but I disagree. For me, that was the day that LeBron killed the NBA. 

Yes, I am from Cleveland, so you could say that I am a bleeding heart. But as I start to mature and set my sights on a career in sports, I have realized that blatant homerism must be minimized on my part. LeBron had the right to leave and he chose it. 

It is strange to see a truly elite player leave teams, but it can happen. Shaq has shown us that and managed to retire as an incredibly liked legend.

I do not begrudge LeBron for his action. I do not hold him responsible for the ripple effect it created.

Still, the decision was an act filled with such blatant disregard for others that it put off the true impact of the moment. 

It was still exciting to see where the dominoes would fall and spend a season wondering if anyone could beat the Heat. When the Mavericks did, it was great to see. Their victory showed me that the "traditional" NBA championship-caliber team could still exist.

That series still felt like a stemming of the tide to me, though. Another putting off of the decision. We would all have to wait another year to see the realization of it.

As the lockout came to an end it somehow made me more excited than ever for an NBA season. I was so happy just to have basketball in a year that I thought there would be none.

During the season, though, I found I had a hard time connecting to the day-to-day aspects that I feel make the league so special. You watch part of or the entirety of one or maybe two games, catch some ESPN maybe, or read some articles. You wake up, check out analysis of what just happened, and the cycle happens over and over again like a beautiful, perfectly-drawn circle.

The shadow of LeBron James hung over it all this year though, dominating it as he did the league. His success and the triumphs of his team were undeniable. They owned ESPN in a way that only a team of Tim Tebows could. He single-handedly took over the basketball moon of planet Twitter and crashed through the blogosphere along the way. 

I witnessed a player perform at a consistently dominant level for an entire year and consume both casual and professional reflection of an entire sport while feeling nothing other than that vague anti-feeling that is a dull emptiness.

How could I witness one of the top ten players of all-time come into his prime before my eyes and simply develop a begrudging respect for him? 

Because LeBron James never gave me any reason to care more than that, and this is why he killed basketball.

Jordan almost killed it when he went to play baseball. Magic when he had to retire earlier than he ever wanted to because of HIV. The reason that LeBron succeeded where they failed is because he continued to play exactly the same way as he did before the decision.

It took me years to fully realize that I would never be able to care about the game the same way I did as a child because of the completely unprecedented nature of his action. We had never seen it before and we were unable to fully analyze it, so we had to keep moving and wait for the moment it came back to smack us in the face.

Yesterday, when LeBron hoisted the Larry O'Brien trophy over his head, was the second day that he killed basketball. 

When you get older you're supposed to become less emotional about sports. It's a natural process of rational development. I was forced to grow up early, though, yesterday. The moment I realized LeBron had become unstoppable, right around the Indiana series, was the first time I had stopped caring about the finals. It only hit me yesterday that this feeling could be permanent.

You can't help but feel that there's something wrong about the whole thing. It's a small, impossible to pinpoint feeling, but one that distracts from all other facets of his actions. There was no place for my joy in the happiest moment of LeBron James life, rather just a tremendous general feeling of apathy where giddy elation should have been.

The way I have come to understand it, sports stars should function as avatars of our human emotions.

They let us get pissed off and allow us to feel happiness when we can't find it on our own when they are at their best. 

But there is no way to identify with the successes of LeBron. No athlete has been as scrutinized as him. Perhaps none have been as athletic in the sport of basketball.  None have had a spectacle like the "decision" to call them their own. These are all things that separate LeBron from us as fans. They are the reasons why LeBron James can never be an avatar for the emotions of others.

These factors of separation are crippling within a societal construction that is meant to allow people to step outside their own lives and share in the lives of their heroes. The brightest stars shine the brightest, sell the most jerseys, inspire the greatest number of fans to think that one day, they too can make their dreams come true.

No one would want to make their dreams come true in the way that LeBron did though. It is undeniable that he achieved what he always wanted to achieve yesterday. But the hatred he had to weather to get there makes his achievement unspectacular seeming.

There is no kid out there who wants to grow up to lose faith in their own city, turn their back on it and wade through the sea of crippling public doubt only to realize that their dream had turned into a mere expectation.

He said it himself, "About damn time."

It's a statement that screams 'I'm just happy we got that out of the way, now let's move on.' But to what? More MVP's or more titles?

We are stuck in a position where the league's greatest star is an alien. Where it's paragon now carries himself as a blank-stared outsider before games. His team stands poised to dominate the league for at least five more years and there is no greater singular feat for either of them to accomplish.

There will be many more iconic moments for James and the Heat. Hollow championships and shallow destruction of competition. Routine highlights and detached excellence. 

It must be explicitly clear that this course will continue. As a good friend of mine who is also from Cleveland but has established the same kind of respect for LeBron that I believe I possess put it, this is a living narrative. 

Again and again will I witness LeBron killing what I love by detaching joy from all of the great moments that should come from reaching the pinnacle of basketball excellence. As a sports enthusiast in general, I should be able to detach my personal feelings in order to extract the greater good for a situation. 

But I couldn't do it this time. 

I kept coming back to the idea that one day we will be left with possibly one of the five greatest players of all-time that no one could really get behind. I recognized the incredible athletic feat that was LeBron leading his team in points, rebounds and assists for the entire playoffs.

I thought about what, legacy-wise, the first ring would finally mean for LeBron James. I wondered how the Thunder would respond over the offseason and pondered if it is time to start putting Dwyane Wade up there with the names of the greatest shooting guards in history.

But they were just thoughts. I couldn't get behind any of them. I didn't care enough to develop any of them. That loss of caring and the realization that these moments will play out pretty redundantly as long as LeBron continues to play in the NBA is easily the scariest realization I have made. 

What is a league when you can't care about its greatest player at his greatest moment because he won't allow you to share in it all?

What possibly could be the point of it all happening again? 

Whatever the answer could be doesn't matter. This is all we have. This is the leagues best player on its best team. 

It's going to happen again. You'll be sitting there, maybe on your couch, wondering where it all went wrong.

That's what happens when a player throws his fans away. 

What happens when that player is one of the greatest of all-time?

He kills the league for you.