There's a lot of talk in the media that LeBron James made a mistake by going to the Miami Heat, that he took the easy way out and that if he wins a title it will be perceived as tainted. Let me be clear, from a publicity standpoint, I think he handled this terribly. From a personal standpoint, I would have liked to see him as a Net or a Knick But anyone who says that going to the Heat is a mistake or a cop-out is just dead wrong.
We don't quite know yet how good LeBron the basketball player is. The average model says that he's been worth approximately 25-30 wins for Cleveland in the regular season. Consensus also seems to be that no matter how many wins he gets in the regular season, without supporting players as good as those that Kobe has in Los Angeles, it will be very difficult for him to win an NBA title. The truth is, we will never know what the future would have held for him had he decided to play for the Cavaliers, the Knicks or the Bulls. But that doesn't mean that we can't draw certain conclusions about his various potential futures.
For the purposes of this thought exercise, I believe that however good LeBron is, it doesn't matter where he plays. LeBron's skills are set. Maybe he's worth twenty regular season wins, maybe forty. Maybe he can lead mediocre teams to a title, maybe he requires another All Star playing alongside him to get a title, maybe he requires another Hall of Famer alongside him. Whatever his value, if we don't know it now it is not because his talents are going to change, but because we don't have yet have enough information to accurately assess them.
The point is, I believe there is a high estimate scenario for LeBron and a low estimate scenario and that we actually know what they are. We're going to think about the Cavaliers, the Knicks, and the Heat assuming that the Cavaliers represent a scenario where he'd probably rarely have another All-Star alongside him, the Knicks a scenario in which he would have had at least one and possibly two All-Stars on his team, and the Heat a situation in which he plays each year with a future top-notch Hall of Famer and another All-Star. If LeBron is as talented as billed, the high estimate scenario, I believe he would win two titles with Cleveland. He'd be billed a national hero by the Midwest press, but when you compare his legacy to Kobe and Jordan he'd fall short. Two titles simply don't compare with six, no matter how much work those two required. If he played with the Knicks in this high-talent scenario, I believe he'd win three to five titles depending on who he was surrounded with. Again, four titles would put him in the conversation about who the greatest post-1990 player was, but probably not at the top. Playing with the Heat, assuming no injuries to Bosh or Wade, I think LeBron will win seven or eight titles. If those three players are as good as we think they are, they simply shouldn't lose as long as they keep playing together. In this scenario, LeBron is squarely in the conversation with Kobe and Jordan. He'll have more titles, but with a better supporting cast. It will be almost impossible not to consider all three as equals with the best being a matter of opinion.
Then there is the low-talent scenario. Here, it turns out that LeBron isn't nearly as good as we think, perhaps he shows a habit of poor play in the playoffs, perhaps his hunger fades after a few years. If he stayed with Cleveland and this were his true talent level, he would never win a title. He'd be written off as a tremendous disappointment, a player who fell short of expectations in a way no one ever has before. In New York I think he'd win a title or two, making him a very good player, a hero to Knicks fans, but someone clearly not in the realm of the greats and perhaps no more highly regarded than a player like Stoudemire or Ewing. In Miami, alongside Wade who's already won on his own, I find it hard to believe that this diminished LeBron wouldn't still win at least three or four titles. Again, he'd be perceived as something less than what he could have been, but it's tough to argue with that many titles, even with so much help. He wouldn't be in the conversation with Jordan and Kobe, but he'd be in the next tier of greats.
Looking at these alternatives, I think it is clear that for the high and low talent cases I've outlined as well as for the in-betweens, LeBron's legacy is best served by playing in Miami, with the Knicks a close second. However talented he turns out to be, he'll win the most titles there, and I think history will remember that Jordan had Pippin and an excellent supporting cast while Kobe had Shaq/Gasol and a similarly talented team. That LeBron choose his cast himself rather than waiting, like Ewing, for it to materialize around him only shows his understanding of the way basketball greatness is evaluated. Those who decry his move to Miami by saying that if he wins there his title will be tainted will do well to remember that the number of titles he wins depends more on who he plays with than on his own talent and that he's more interested in how the last title he wins will look than the first.
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