"The Decision," the extremely obnoxious television special devoted to where James would choose to play after his contract with the Cleveland Cavaliers ended, aired in the summer of 2010. Okay so that's 11 years. I conflated listening to coverage of LeBron's "decision" with my friends Dave and Lauren's wedding in March of 2011, because I remember the road I was driving on while listening to the coverage on the radio. I guess I was also on that road for another reason in the summer of 2010.
I had never minded James before that, when he was just an exceptionally talented Ohio boy made good on his hometown Cavaliers, doing his best to bring them to greatness but never having the supporting cast to allow him to get all the way to his goal of an NBA championship.
But he was close -- very close. The Cavs had made it to the finals in 2007, and had won their conference in both 2009 and 2010, the latter being James' last year in a Cleveland uniform. It was worth trying to find that supporting cast, not jumping ship for another team.
But James did jump ship, famously "tak[ing] his talents to South Beach" to join the Miami Heat. For some reason, that phrase "I'm going to take my talents to South Beach" became for me the embodiment of an arrogance in James I was just discovering, as well as the necessary quitter attitude to leave the fan base and city that had loved him to join a team that was already championship caliber (having won it all only four years earlier), a kind of piling on that has since become very common in the NBA as more and more teams try to assemble a "super team." It could also be because that quote was immortalized when it was incorporated into a hip hop song at the time, so I had to keep hearing it.
It was the perfect timing for me to get a new NBA villain, as Kobe Bryant's Los Angeles Lakers would not win another championship while he was still on the roster, and the Lakers were my New York Yankees of basketball. (Actually, the Yankees were really my baseball Lakers as I started following basketball first.) Bryant was the face of that team that beat my Celtics in 2010, but I don't think they even made another finals while Bryant was there -- actually, they didn't make another finals until 2020, nine months after Bryant was killed in that helicopter crash. (Rest in peace to a man I think of fondly now that he's gone.)
My new villain lost his first NBA finals with the Heat, to my inestimable joy. But James won it all the next two years, permanently validating his choice to bail on his hometown team. It was like the two Super Bowls won by one of my biggest football villains, Eli Manning, whose own shenanigans related to what team he was going to play for were the main reason I didn't like him. Once he'd won them, there was no taking them away.
James experienced a slight uptick with me when he returned to Cleveland, vowing to finish what he started years ago, and succeeding in 2016 when he finally brought a championship to a city truly starved for them. (The Indians haven't won since 1948 and we won't even talk about the Cleveland Browns.) But that didn't last as he left Cleveland again and went to the hated Lakers, creating another super team by bringing in Anthony Davis, and winning it all again last year -- his fourth championship overall, only one of which was not tainted by James seeming like he specifically chose the path of least resistance. Only Cleveland truly needed his "talents" -- Miami and LA already had either the personnel, or the history as an organization, to get by without them.
As I told you, the Lakers are tied with the Yankees as my most hated teams in professional sports. When James took them to a championship last year, it allowed LA to tie my Celtics for the most championships (17) in NBA history.
I give you all this background so you understand why I might have gone into Space Jam: A New Legacy with my kids on Thursday night, its opening day here in Australia (a week ahead of the U.S.), with an all-time high hatred of LeBron James and everything he stands for. In fact, this background is basically what gets covered in the film's opening credits, so anyone who hasn't followed James' career can be brought up to speed. I may have been cherry-picking in my hatred of James -- for example, I conveniently ignored everything he's done to help disadvantaged communities and his work as an SJW -- but when it comes to professional athletes, it's not always rational. You latch your hatred onto certain things -- like, affiliation with a particular sports franchise -- and look past the things that offset the things you hate. (It's kind of like how I am able to feel more fondly toward Republican politicians after they're retired. When they're still in the game, I can only see that team affiliation.)
I also give you all this background to tell you how surprising it is that after Space Jam: A New Legacy, I may like LeBron James now.
This is not only a surprise because of the movie's star. It's also a surprise because I really did not like the original Space Jam, which starred Michael Jordan -- who I always back in any discussion of the greatest basketball players of all time, especially when James is presented as the other option in the argument. In fact, I can't now fathom what I could have possibly found so disagreeable about such a surely harmless film, but my retroactive rating of it on Letterbox (assigned in early 2012, probably ten years after I saw it) was 1.5 stars. If I didn't like the Space Jam starring Michael Jordan, who I always liked, what chance did I have of liking the one starring James?
Well, it happened. This movie basically tickled me pink from the very beginning. And James played a big role in that.
I may not think James is a better basketball player than Michael Jordan, but he is definitely a better actor. He's got a lot more range and is a lot more comfortable in the role of performing. He's funny and his exasperation with the Looney Tunes he interacts with is priceless. When his face hits an invisible barrier and slides down, his lip and cheek dragging against the glass surface as gravity pulls him toward the floor, it's comedy gold.
This doesn't come out of nowhere. Depending on how you define an "actor," James has 21 acting credits on IMDB. The only one I really remember is Trainwreck, where I found him to be the best part of the movie -- and it wasn't really even that close.
I don't suppose I thought James would be inept here, knowing he had the basic skills to be an actor (or at least to play himself), but I was wary of the ways his ego would seep through into the project and sully it for me. Having watched this movie, I now think that my whole idea of James having an overblown ego may have itself been overblown. Just because he said he was going to "take his talents to South Beach" does not mean he is egotistical. I mean, the man demonstrably has talents -- that's just fact.
In fact, Space Jam: A New Legacy is more than happy to needle James a couple times -- a real sign of how good of a sport he is, since you know he would have signed off on everything related to how he was depicted. I mean, there's nothing that approaches a roast or anything like that, but the character played by Don Cheadle -- an evil algorithm (don't worry, it works) -- does give him what for a couple times. At one point he talks about all the teams James has left -- "Cleveland again" -- which I thought was a smart acknowledgment by James of all the fans he has disappointed over the years.
Then there's Al G. Rithm's response to the comment by James' son, Dom, who is played by actor Cedric Joe. Dom James is talking about how his dad is one of the greatest ever in his line of work, and Al responds with a bit of a high pitch in his voice, "Well I think the jury is still out on that." The James I thought I knew would have had all the characters in the film recognize his superiority over Michael Jordan in the great binary between the two of them, and even though it's the villain voicing this doubt, I don't think that changes the effect of the moment.
Fact is, James is too smart to make this a simple ego project for himself. He's mostly a very strong character, of course, but he's happy to undercut himself a couple times, knowing he can take it. You win more people over with modesty than braggadocio.
Also I reckon James is too hard of a worker to allow an inferior product to go out under his name. That's why Space Jam: A New Legacy feels like such a tight ship, even at 115 minutes in length. The animation is good, the jokes are funny, and the film has heart. James wouldn't have accepted anything less.
And I wasn't the only one in my family who kind of loved the movie. My older son, who is in a huge basketball phase right now, quite liked it. Surprisingly, though, it was the younger son, who doesn't even care about sports, who said it was among his five favorite movies of all time. And he's not the one who usually talks about where things rank for him all time -- that's his brother's move. I guess even non sports fans can be charmed to death by LeBron James.
I said I always mellow on villainous athletes and politicians after they retire. At age 36, James probably won't retire for five more years -- or who knows, maybe he has the "ego" to keep playing even longer than that.
But Space Jam: A New Legacy has definitely pushed forward my mellowing timeline when it comes to James.
In fact, against all odds, I may even like him now.
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