Cathal Kelly
There was a moment in the NBA finals – just a glimmering – during which it seemed possible everyone might fall in love with LeBron James.
He was getting beat up out there. For once, he wasn't getting the calls. He was still performing at a super-human level. From Games 1 through 4, the force field of ego that James maintains at all times was becoming porous. He was beginning to let people in.
The finals effectively ended in the fourth quarter of Game 5. Afterward, James was asked where his head was at.
"I feel confident because I'm the best player in the world …" – death stare – "… That simple."
The shields were back up, and the photon torpedoes were now locked on their targets.
After losing the series in Game 6, James rounded out his self-assessment to include his teammates: "We ran out of talent."
He's right in both instances. He is the best. And the Cavaliers – missing all-stars Kevin Love and Kyrie Irving to injury – were not a championship-calibre basketball team. They were a limited-run sitcom called LeBron & Friends.
The core of any truly great athlete is hate. Hating to lose; hating to be doubted; hating the idea that anyone other than themselves has a say in their destiny. This is why James claimed he would prefer not to make the playoffs, rather than lose another final. Because after a final, it feels like it's his own fault. And he hates that, too.
The public would prefer that athletes talk in terms of love: 'I love the game. I love my teammates. I love the fans.' Few of them think like that – like geniuses in any field, they're spurred by over-watered ids and a boulder-sized sense of thwartedness – but they've learned to talk like it.
Take someone like Raptors point guard Kyle Lowry. Do you think he spends his days mooning about how great the people are up in Toronto and how lucky he is to make millions bouncing a ball? I rather suspect he devotes a frightening amount of emotional energy to remembering all the people inside the game who bad-mouthed or gave up on him. It isn't love that drives Kyle Lowry into the gym every day. It's hate.
Like James, Lowry spent most of his career disconnected from the public. He was good, but no one liked him – too brittle, too mopey. Eventually, he learned to strap on a smile. At times, you can actually see him hauling it up the sides of his face as he walks in front of a camera.
Now people think he's a great guy. There may be something to the fact that once people fell in love with Lowry, his game began to fray around the edges. Mid-career, he's being forced to find something other than doubt to drive him.
James is beyond that level. He does not require external stimulation. He may be the most self-contained team athlete at work. He proved over two remarkable months in the playoffs that he can win basketball games through force of will. That he was not chosen the finals MVP renders the award meaningless.
The coming off-season will make James even more disliked. He is transparently in charge of all of Cleveland's personnel decisions, a power he reportedly wields in a loose, passive-aggressive way. His teams are often left trying to read his mind.
It was James who wanted Cleveland to trade Andrew Wiggins for Kevin Love, in order to win immediately. Once he got his man, James quickly tired of him. It's easy to imagine Love leaving now. In that scenario, the Cavs will have given up on a decade's worth of a generational talent for one season of a player who hardly registered.
They'll probably fire the coach, David Blatt, because it is excruciatingly obvious James thinks he's a nitwit. Whomever comes to fill those spots will have to publicly bend the knee, which people hate to see.
Fans in Cleveland want quick reassurances that James isn't leaving. They're not getting them. James will opt out of his current deal by the end of the month. Everything he does between that moment and re-signing (to another one-year deal) will be seen as a threat.
Whatever James says about his long-term plans won't mean much, because he's already said all the right things once before and he still left. The lesson he learned out of that is to tell unpleasant truths instead of comforting lies. The former come back on you for a few days, while the latter linger forever.
The longer James goes without committing to Cleveland, the more people will turn against him, inside and outside Ohio.
Everything he does will make him look selfish. Because he is, and deservedly so.
Real greatness is a form of selfishness. It's obsessional. Everyone and everything around you is there to service your ability. James is one of the few players who won't make an effort to hide that fact.
He's 30 years old now. He's not changing. A body the size of his won't hold up forever. At three-quarters speed, James could still be the best player in basketball. But he won't be able to do what he did these last couple of weeks – win games alone.
From now until the end, he's servicing only one goal – more rings. Not for the city of Cleveland or fans of the game. He wants more championships, because what's the point of being the best if you don't get the spoils?
Maybe there was a moment when James could've switched tacks, and gone the route of the happy loser. We might like him then. But it would the sort of "like" engendered by pity. Eventually, people would've hated him even more for that.
I think he may be that true rarity – someone who doesn't care what other people think of him. That's the key to James's brilliance, as well as the reason he rubs so many people the wrong way. He has only ever deigned to be measured by one person – himself.
Follow me on Twitter: @cathalkelly
Cathal Kelly