Many of you know I live in Akron, LeBron's hometown. I drive almost right by his house(if you can call the beautiful compound he lives in a house) on a weekly basis. I'd love to see him stay in Cleveland.
But, as a lifelong Cleveland sports fan, I kind of expect him to bolt. Longtime sports fans around here are about 98% scar tissue at this point, but the remaining 2% is angry, bitter and defeated.
We can still get excited about a local team that does well, but we do so with guarded hearts that are always waiting for the other shoe to drop and crush our dreams again. The odd thing is that we wear this as a kind of badge of honor. Living through our history leaves you feeling like a survivor.
I think I am a little more objective than many people around here when it comes to this situation though. While I really, really do want him to stay, I just hope we can at least work out a "sign and trade" deal if he decides to leave.
I am grateful for the chance to watch him play here for the last 10 years or so. Yes, I am including his high school games, many of which were on local, and sometimes national, tv. It is a truly rare thing to have a kid from your hometown grow into the best player in his sport and watch him do so on your local sports franchise.
I would really hate to see him go, but I would certainly respect his decision to do so. He is a grown man who has done an awful lot for this area. If he decides that somewhere like Chicago gives him the best chance to win a championship, I will understand that. They have a great nucleus with Derek Rose and Joakim Noah and LeBron grew up rooting for the Bulls as Michael Jordan was his idol. I get that, I really do.
I just hope that he does decide to stay and help us get our first world championship in almost 50 years. That would mean an unbelievable amount to this city. If he does, we could still keep our badges, we could just pin them on our world champions t-shirts.
