Bryan Joiner

Remember when he accepted the head coaching job for the Orlando Magic and came back to Florida within days?

Remember when Billy Beane agreed to become general manager of the Boston Red Sox and came back to Oakland within days?

I’m starting to get the sense that LeBron might, in fact, announce that he’s joining a team other than the Cavaliers tonight. My sense based on nothing but rumor and innuendo and “implications” that Chris Broussard apparently reported out and turned into a story sometime between when I went to sleep at 1:30 and woke up at 7:30, but I get the feeling nonetheless.

What I won’t believe, until the contract is signed, is that LeBron is playing with a team other than the Cavaliers. The self-imposed Thursday deadline isn’t doing him any favors if he hasn’t already made up his mind—why force yourself to make the biggest decision of your life before you’re ready?—and if he has made up his mind, and made it up at the same time he pitched Decision idea to ESPN, it seems to me that it would point him back to Cleveland. I’m not going to read anything into Bronathan’s decision to have this whole thing go down in Greenwich, CT, other than to say that if he wanted to come off as a stuffy asshole, he succeeded.

But all that will be a footnote to history, the same way Ali/Liston II pops up in every discussion of Lewiston, Maine. The real news will be where LeBronny plays basketball. It’s easy to say you’re going to leave home, but it’s harder to do it. I’ll believe LeBron’s gone when I see it.