LeBron James vs. Cleveland Cavaliers: When Will This Silly Feud End?

LeBron James' second return trip to Cleveland didn't turn out as he had expected.

Sure, he notched a triple-double (his most meaningless since the Game 6 loss to the Celtics in last year's playoffs), but his Miami Heat went home with a loss to the worst team in the NBA.

As was expected, LeBron was jeered just like he was in his first game in Cleveland in December, although the hatred was not as palpable this time around.

Every time LeBron touched the ball, the fans booed. Every time he was knocked on his keister, the fans cheered, even when he made the shot while being knocked down by J.J. Hickson in the first quarter.

It seems that although the Cavaliers fans are beginning to get over James and, dare I say, are even starting to appreciate some of the things that he did for the city.

But the feud between James and the people of Cleveland will continue to roll on.

First, I must say as a Cavaliers fan I have to at least appreciate LeBron for getting the city interested in basketball again. If I can give the man credit for one good thing, that is it.

Before LeBron, the team was stagnant and people were yearning for the success of the early 90s, also known as the Post-Stepien era (he may have only owned the team from '81 to '83, but the effect of his irrational and idiotic decisions lingered for much of the 80s).

LeBron came and they were given everything they had hoped for except, of course, a championship.

The simple fact is that the fans hate what he did to their city, a city that they love.

Outsiders may view it as irrational and may look at Cleveland as a gussied-up Detroit, but the people of Cleveland, and Ohio for that matter, absolutely love their city.

And when you do something against the city, the people take it personally.

Because of that, the feud between Cleveland and LeBron James may never end.

There is something about James, and it probably isn't helped by the information era that we live in, that makes everything he does magnified.

We see him skipping the pre-game introduction as he did last night and we can immediately jump on that and call him scared or a punk for his actions, even if he was going to the bathroom as he said he was.

Every little thing he does can be somehow bent and manipulated to either be made as a slight toward the Cavs or to make him seem like an incredibly distant, fake and disingenuous person.

There are a few scenarios that could happen as the days turn into months, months into years and years into decades as we go along from this point.

First, the Miami Heat could win a title with LeBron, which, surprisingly enough, is a possibility.

LeBron with a ring on his finger will just add to the fury of Cavs fans. They will shout about how he was Dwyane Wade's sidekick even louder and call his ill-gotten ring meaningless compared to what it could have been had he won it with the Cavaliers.

Call it jealousy, call it insanity, call it passion, but there is almost no possibility of this feud ending during LeBron's playing days if he wins a title.

Second, by some insane stroke of luck, the Cavs could win a title before LeBron and the Heat do. Maybe Wade retires and Chris Bosh goes extinct (yea, that's a dinosaur joke) or the Cavs end up hitting grand slams in the next few drafts.

Either way, just go with it here.

If Cleveland wins a ring before their former King, all hell will break loose in Cleveland and the win will be thrown back into the face of LeBron for as long as he is playing.

Finally, let's go forward 25 years. LeBron James is retired, maybe he has a couple of championships under his belt, maybe not, either way it doesn't really matter.

The only way I see this feud even remotely being settled is if James actually admits fault in his decision to leave Cleveland.

I'm not saying that he would need to come out and say that the ESPN special was poorly conceived, but he would need to come out and say that he regretted everything about the decision he made.

Cleveland would not simply forgive him for accepting what he did as wrong, he would need to show actual remorse.

We loved LeBron in Cleveland. At times, we were overzealous with our love, that is easy to see now and we still love some of the things that he did for this city, but he went and dumped us for the next pretty little thing that walked by.

That is a difficult relationship to repair, if it can be repaired at all.