LeBron James' Return To Cleveland Should Kick Off 2010-11 NBA Season
NBA Commissioner David Stern always envisions himself as the smartest person in the room, no matter where he is at any given moment.
Stern can prove he is an intellectual as well as business savvy when the league releases team and national television schedules in the coming weeks.
If he is as wise as he thinks he is, Stern will have LeBron James and the Miami Heat travel to Cleveland to face the Cavaliers on NBA Opening Night.
Call it "The Return."
By acquiring free agents James and Chris Bosh, and re-signing Dwyane Wade, the Heat have become the most polarizing (and star-studded) team in the league.
Right or wrong, LeBron has become the latest most-hated athlete in the world after "The Decision" debacle.
Most basketball fans either want to watch him and the new "Big Three" win the NBA title or watch him collapse in humiliating failure.
Obviously, Miami will get the maximum of 25 nationally televised games, but every team gets at least one (even the Los Angeles Clippers).
Given the current state of the Cavs, they probably won't be worthy of more than one national game, and this is the only Cavs game both hardcore and casual basketball fans want to see.
The wounds from LeBron's free agency announcement will still be fresh in the hearts and minds of Clevelanders. Even when the season starts in November, the anger in Northern Ohio toward James will not have dissipated.
People would tune in to watch the reaction in Quicken Loans Arena when the Prodigal Son returns to Cleveland.
Will Cavs fans boo LeBron louder than the vuvuzelas during the World Cup, or will there be some cheers mixed in?
More importantly, people would want to see how King James responds to the visceral resentment from 20,000 of his former witnesses. After seven years cultivating a positive image, will he crack under the intensity of this newfangled hatred?
I also want to see if LeBron and Cavs owner Dan Gilbert have any interaction—pre or postgame. How tense and terse would that conversation be?
The game itself may be not much of a contest, but the media attention given to LeBron's first game back in Cleveland should be hyped even more than "The Decision" was.
Other than Miami vs. the Los Angeles Lakers, the first Heat-Cavs game will be the most watched NBA game of the season (NBA fans will likely have to wait until Christmas Day and Super Bowl Sunday for Heat-Lakers games).
We saw how much buzz the NFL generated by giving fans a Minnesota Vikings-New Orleans Saints rematch of the NFC Championship Game to kickoff its 2010 season.
The NBA will get the same must-see anticipation from a Heat-Cavs matchup on Opening Night.
Stern might have thought "The Decision" was "ill-conceived, badly produced and poorly executed," but "The Return" to start the 2010-11 NBA season would be well-conceived, over-dramatically produced and brilliantly executed.
