Transcript of There's Always This Year (feat. Hanif Abdurraqib)

I've talked to a number of different athletes after they've retired, and they say, man, I was watching myself on film that last season, and I was wincing and cringing at how I looked out there, because I'm watching, I'm like, ah, I'm not as good as I used to be. When LeBron watches himself, do you believe that he sees a great deal of deterioration, or that he believes he can always outthink now with his guile because he's smarter than everyone else? There's certainly no deterioration how smart he is, so whatever he thinks he he knows more than everyone else that he can use. Do you think when he watches film of himself, he's seeing any deterioration?

I'm playing Kreskin now, so I'm putting myself in his brain. But I would say when he sees himself play, he absolutely knows there's things I can't do anymore because he's talked about it. Like, I can't do that anymore. But I do believe what you're saying, which is, but I will find a mental workaround to my inability to physically do this. So I will still be great, but I don't think he watches like, I'm just as good as I was in 2013.

Didn't he have a dunk last year where the three of us were still like, how is that possible in your 40s?

Maybe just doing this podcast alone, but it makes me feel sorry for you know who, the first person who has to make a LeBron James statue. You've got so much to choose from.

Oh, it'll be easy.

Easy?

Yeah, just look at the one across the street. Oh, just don't do that.

Okay, just don't do Dwyane Wade's hideous statue.

Rawr!

I'm tired of this man being celebrated. For what? This is the step back.

Next drive, steps back, puts up a 3. Bang!

LeBron James from downtown.

The Cleveland Cavaliers select LeBron James.

LeBron, what's your decision?

I made a difficult decision, but I understood what my future was about. I believe our president is trying to divide us. My first response was, "You bum." Episode 6: There's Always This Year. I would love for it to end here, but I'm also not silly or too jaded to know the business of the game as well. You know, the basketball, things of that nature, obviously has given me an unbelievable platform to be able to do the things that I love to do and give me so many opportunities to, you know, inspire the youth and things over the last, you know, 23 years, 2 decades. Was, but, uh, my legacy is my kids.

Pop quiz, guys. How many Hall of Famers, like current, already in the Hall of Fame, has LeBron played with? Drop some names if you can think of them.

Shaquille O'Neal.

That's one. Okay.

Dwyane Wade.

All right, that's another one.

Chris Bosh.

Yeah, you're good at this game. I'm sitting here struggling here. I'm going through a lot of, you know, uh, Booby Gibsons and, uh, on that same team for a fourth one?

Ray Allen.

There you go.

Yeah.

Current Hall of Famers. So the number is— let's see here, we're gonna go with the Lakers. Have the Lakers had a Hall of Famer play on— he's been with the Lakers for 8 years. Who's the Lakers Hall of Famer?

Has he played with a Hall of Famer on the Lakers?

2. Relatively new inductees, obviously.

Not Dwight Howard.

Dwight Howard.

Okay, there you go.

You'll get one of these 2. I don't know if you'll get the last one.

There's 2 left Overall, one with the Lakers and one from another era.

That is correct.

Okay.

Um, I have a sweeping insecurity rolling through me right now because Amin is so much better at this game than I am. I'm trying to find a Laker Hall of Famer that I'm missing, and I cannot find anybody.

He was in the same draft class as LeBron.

Luke Jackson. It's an Oregon Hall of Famer.

Who the hell is a Hall of Famer? And he said pop quizzes are fun, and I'm not, I'm not having any fun with this. Oh, Carmelo Anthony. Come on, man. Come on.

But there's still one more.

There's still one more from earlier in his career.

Hall of Famer from earlier in his career. I'll even tell you it wasn't Miami Heat. It was an early portion of the Cleveland Cavaliers.

Who did he play with early that was a Hall of Famer?

You ready?

I might have the sound ready.

Big Z's not a Hall of Famer, right? Big Z.

No. Right position, though.

That's center.

A center? Hit it. Ben Wallace. Oh, get out of here. That's right. I don't have any— what do you mean, that's right? I don't have any recollection An event?

So this is, I'll tell you exactly. Ben Wallace was in Chicago, he had signed a big deal, left Detroit, goes to Chicago. Him and Joakim Noah butt heads. Joakim Noah was the young whippersnapper, whatever, and Ben Wallace ends up, 'cause he's the older one and more expensive and also decaying, he gets traded to Cleveland. I believe Luol Deng was in that deal as well.

Probably.

Maybe, I don't know.

What a terrible word to assign to both an athlete and a human, decaying. I mean, that's worse than getting old or getting bad.

That's just—

that's worse than a corpse.

That's rotting. You're a human being of rotting flesh.

Well, his game had rotting flesh on it.

Future Hall of Famers he's played with— Kyrie's on that list, Russell Westbrook, Anthony Davis, probably Luka, Kevin Love. He's going to be in the Hall of Fame.

All right.

But he's also played with 9 number 1 picks. Do you guys know who those were?

Oh, I think I could play. All right.

You guys are going to make me leave. I'm going to leave right now. And, and, and— Pop quizzes, total bullshit. Like, you promise people fun and exciting pop quizzes? Get out of here.

The reason I bring this up, Dan, is because the tapestry that LeBron has woven, not only has it just been so long, but he has effectively scratched every itch he'd ever want in the NBA. Remember that time when he was in Miami when he talked about, what if we had contraction and then all of a sudden Kevin Love's on my team? And it's just like the very next team he was on, Kevin Love was there. He's played with Russell Westbrook, played with all these guys. There's one that I feel like he still wants to. He still wants to play with Steph Curry. I don't think he's done them all, and he still might. Who knows? But it makes me wonder, like, as LeBron does this longer, Dan, what is he playing for? Is it the respect? Is it just for the fun? Is it for the rings? Is it for legacy? Is it for the fans? Is it for his kids? Like, what is the whole endgame of LeBron James?

I don't think that there's anything in the world that he loves outside of his family more than the sculpting required to be the level of genius genius that he is at doing this thing. And I believe it's not the practice, it's not the weight room, it's not the flying, it's just the playing of games. If you were possibly the best that anyone had ever seen at anything, would you want to stop doing it?

I think there's two things. I think one, every player, especially when you're like— think about this— LeBron has been in the NBA longer than he's been alive outside the NBA. The majority of his life has been spent as an NBA player. When you talk about this is the only life I know, there aren't many people walking the earth who can say that. This is literally the only life I know. And to do anything else, even as you have interest in other things, man, it just— there's a whole part of your life that is the structure I wake up, I do this, I eat this, I work out, I do this, I go this. Now I have free time. Free time's over. I go in, I get shots, I get that. And then— and this is just the offseason. Regular season is like, I get up, I go into the thing, I get treatment, I go, I come back home, I take my nap. And then to remove all of that structure and say, do whatever you want. It reminds me of the guy from Shawshank. Remember, got out and then like a week later he killed himself.

Red.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's like I don't know a life that does not involve this amount of structure. I think that's general to all athletes who are competing. The other part which I think is specific to him is the knowledge deep down inside. You ain't gonna win 6 titles. And even if you do, it will never be 6 for 6. So the only way I can win this argument is to win every other ancillary argument. Stats and how many Finals wins.

So it's legacy to you. You think it's overall legacy.

I think the majority of it is this is This is the only Nobody's life I know, and then I think you can fill in the remainder with legacy.

gonna love you half as much as we do.

Hanif Abdurraqib, that was your fault that we had to listen to that again. Joining us now, he's one of America's most lauded cultural critics. He's a poet, an essayist whose writing about A Tribe Called Quest was longlisted for a National Book Award. He's also— a 2021 essay collection, A Little Devil in America, was a finalist for the National Book Award. And we here have been reading his latest book, There's Always This Year, on basketball and ascension, which was also longlisted for the National Book Award. He's a contributing writer for The New Yorker, officially a genius, then, according to the MacArthur Foundation. But for our purposes today, he's from Columbus, Ohio, East Columbus, 41 years old, which is to say he grew up alongside LeBron James. Oddly, a Timberwolves fan, which we'll get to, I guess, at some point.

What?

But Hanif Abdurraqib, thank you so much for joining us and congrats. I'm being the first person to make me read a book in a long time.

I appreciate it, y'all. Thanks for taking time and thanks for spending time with the book too.

He writes a lot about the tension between Black excellence and ordinariness. But I want you to understand as we talk about this, that there are very few things that have as much degree of difficulty as what LeBron did. But trying to make a living as a poet would be among them because poetry is a tough career. You are very poetic long form, but you said something simple in the book to come from a place that people leave and then come back to a place that people leave.

Yeah, yeah. You know, I still live in, I still live in East Columbus. You know, I came up in a really rough area without a lot of resources, not unlike LeBron, but also not unlike many people in many places who eventually make something of themselves, be that a 9-to-5 that they're proud of or a writing career or an NBA career. And it was important for me, you know, I lived in Connecticut for 2 and a half years and did not love it with respect to Connecticut, I suppose. Or maybe not, but I moved home and it was important for me to situate myself back in this place where it is not only familiar to me because it is where I grew up, but it's familiar to me because, you know, I write in the book about how I was unhoused. I didn't have a house. I was homeless. You know, I was wandering these exact streets and I grew a real affection for them, you know? And I think you make a— the path through which all of us make a living is, I think, at least for me, I guess, through a series of dreams that manifest themselves at uneven times and are touchable sometimes and are not touchable at all.

And then you stumble forward until you can touch enough of them to string together something that works. And so, you know, like, I never wanted to be a writer. I never wanted to be a poet. I didn't study. I was bad at school. I didn't study writing in school. And I think that is why so much of my approach to writing and my approach to this book in specific is asking questions of what's the kind of thing I'm interested in? What's the kind of thing I'm excited about? How can I chase it and make it perhaps exciting to other people? And, um, I love basketball, I love music. These are the things that have defined the tentpoles of my life. And so much of my work just echoes through that, those chambers.

Hanif, how much of thinking of LeBron as an allegory for life in Northeast Ohio, how much of that had you thought of prior to even deciding to write this book?

Not a lot. When I first pitched this book, I had nothing. You know, book proposals are funny 'cause a book proposal is just a series of lies. You know, you're just lying to get somebody to, and then once you get the book deal, I guess I'm giving free game to all you writers out there. The book proposal means nothing. Means nothing. You can— you're just trying to get someone in the door, and once they're in the door, you can sell them anything else you want. So when the book proposal happened, I had this idea of like, I want to write about Ohio in the age of LeBron James. But that actually doesn't mean anything. That's just words, you know? And I had this like essay about He Got Game, which I think ended up in the book. But what I realized as I kind of dug into it more was I was— my central concern was about time and about the loss of time and about age and about aging and, and in some real ways about becoming my father. And it's fascinating that I worked on the bulk of this book, of course, before Bronny was in the NBA and before Bronny was even an NBA prospect.

And I did not realize that by the time the book was in the world, there would be a real tight thread between— you know, I think there's a large portion of this book about fatherhood and about me looking at my father through all of our joys and complications and saying, oh, wait, I'm becoming that guy. And so even if I don't want to become that guy, I'm becoming that guy. And therefore I need to think about how I can better love that guy because it is gonna fall on me to love myself when I become him. And that both has nothing to do with LeBron James, but has everything to do with LeBron James in a way, because he is the one athlete that I can say I saw him when he was 14 and I was 14, and now he's 41 and I'm 41. And yes, our lives are vastly different, but I'm, I'm tracing my own mortality through his ascension.

Can you put us with you in the prison library? What are you seeing as you see LeBron on the television? What are you feeling?

Yeah, you know what's funny? To be locked up, particularly when I was in that era, which was early 2000s, everyone had a story about how they knew LeBron, you know, everyone in Ohio, at least to be locked up in Ohio. So, you know, and I was new, I was like a new inmate, so I was in the back. I had a little cot in the back, so I could barely see the TV except for when, you know, there was a replay in slow motion, I could see the top of LeBron's arm. And it was in a way jarring, 'cause I remember being a teenager and going to Akron St. Vincent games and watching those from the— you just have to sit on the baseline. And in that moment, you know, I had nothing going on. So it was this idea of this is what happens. Like, this is a real material reality of someone's life ascending past you as you descend. So it's like one going down and one going up. And it feels in that moment like you'll actually never, get to any point that is anywhere near even or equal to that. However, I felt a lot of gratitude for being witness in that moment because it, it took me elsewhere.

It took me from a place that was really horrible. And for a moment I got to say, while all these people around me were like, oh yeah, I was his barber, or I knew his mom, or I, I got to say, I got to sit and watch him play basketball for a little while when he was in high school. And this memory is arriving to me now when I'm in this place where memories don't really survive.

You mentioned loving music. Can you walk us through the feelings and the link to the begging song?

Yeah, gosh, the begging song. So most of my work, I mean, I think most people know me first as a music critic. Most of my work has evolved around music. You know, I think I'm very knowledgeable about music, but I also love basketball deeply. And so I was looking for a way to shoehorn music analysis into this book, and I thought about this ecosystem that existed when LeBron left Cleveland, where people were both angry with him but wanting him back desperately. And that plays into this kind of real Boyz II Men-like, or even to go back, Otis Redding-like approach of, baby, please come back to me. But we actually don't know, you know, the function of the begging song is so often that you don't see or know what the man did. So it's almost always a man. You don't see or know what they've done. Before the person left. You arrive to them as they are on their knees pleading, but you don't see what they did to maybe push the person away. And what people maybe don't remember is Cleveland fans, before LeBron left, you know, to go to Miami, they were, they were kind of pushing him out the door, you know.

He had failed in their eyes in the playoffs, and they were on some, you know, they were on that stuff where it's like, well, maybe we're just better off without him, you know. We just need to rebuild. And then when it got serious, when it was like, oh, this guy might really leave, then it was like, we're just playing, you know, come back, I'm just playing around, more serious. Yeah, you know. And so it was like The begging song is perfect for that because you arrive to a Boyz II Men song, they're already on their knees in the rain in silk suits, and no one's asking them the question of, well, what did you do to make her leave? Because they don't ever have to answer, you know. And in some ways, the begging song, it's a mythology unto itself, you know. It functions as, look at how vulnerable I am, please come back. And the other thing on the other side of that is, well, if she doesn't come back, there's at least an audience who can see how vulnerable and sad I am, so someone will come back, you know. We'll take anyone.

The crazy part is this— I'm pulling from my memories of 2014, but there was a not insignificant part of the Northeast Ohio Cleveland Cavalier fandom population that saw it the opposite way, that LeBron was begging their forgiveness and, okay, you can, you can come back. And so I was wondering for you, how do you, how do you balance that juxtaposition?

You saw the wordsmith change his language there, right? He said on that stuff. He wanted to say that those Cleveland Cleveland fans were on that shit.

They were on that shit pushing him out. But then some of them were on, okay, fine, you can come back home. When in reality, it's him who had to forgive them.

Yeah. I was like, I don't know if I can curse on here. I'm glad you clocked that. I was like, well, don't let me. Yeah. I mean, I think in some ways Cleveland fans, and I don't want to speak for them on the whole in mass, but there's been tons of writing on this and mythologizing on this. There's an inferiority thing. Right? There's like an inferiority. So to have someone choose them, because LeBron was drafted there and he was happy to go there, but just to have someone say, I choose to be here, you know, I think there is some sense of relief and pleasure, but it's masked by this inferiority thing that, that can only be satiated by flipping the script and being like, oh yeah, you know, we'll, we'll take you, it's fine. But I mean, like, Cleveland fans are also wild. And I mean, that, that Dan Gilbert letter was wild, you know, that shit was like Comic Sans, not only the Comic Sans or the actual language. And so I think there was so much resentment built up by Cleveland fans. Every time he won with Miami, there was like a new layer of resentment that was built.

And so the only thing you can do if you have that level of resentment and you believe he is not coming back is that when he does come back, you can't take back the burning jersey. You can't take back the shoes in the trash can. You can't take back all the things you publicly said. You gotta be like, okay, fine, I'll accept it, I guess. So there is some of that too. You know, I think I was thinking about this the other day. Had he not come back and won a championship, I think his legacy looks a lot different in Ohio. Even him coming back at the time was not seen as good enough, in part because he was so good in Miami. You know, for me, if I'm just talking about this like, you know, I love ball, if I'm talking about this from a basketball fan perspective, he was maybe at his prime in Miami. And a lot of things facilitated that, you know, like he had a better supporting cast so he could be better on both ends of the floor, all these things. But to come back to Cleveland and a Cleveland team that was a lot— it was reformatted.

It wasn't like era one LeBron Cleveland where he was taking some guys to the finals that maybe, you know, this is a better Cleveland team. And so had he come back and not been able to get over the top and win a championship with that team, I think there would still be a lot of, a lot of pain and perhaps some bitterness. But I do think the Cavs have that championship banner in the arena. They have not won one since. And so for the time being, he is still kind of this mythological figure. Due to that alone.

One of the things that you talked about in the book, you have a, a concept called the architecture of affection. So I'm curious when it comes to LeBron, how your regard for him has evolved from your childhood to now where he has been this sort of architect of his own sort of public affection, if you will, and how he's been treated or talked about locally among those people who he grew up with.

Yeah, you know, I think it's interesting because in some ways LeBron and I have, uh, we're on a similar timeline, just a linear timeline. And so in a lot of ways, he always seemed to me like he was so far ahead of every one of my peers, even if they were doing the same thing that he was doing. And my arc of witnessing him has always been through this mode of almost, uh, wonder and sympathy. Sympathy, not like, oh, look at the poor, rich, multi-millionaire athlete, but sympathy in that you don't get to fully be a child in a way. You don't get to fully be the, you know, he was seen as like a grown man at 14. And he was also carrying the responsibilities of an entire ecosystem, entire city, an entire sports ecosystem at 18, 17, 18. And so there's a way that I think you, can miss out on a youth, a linear timeline that better suits whatever pleasures you might want to dive into that aren't the thing that people think you're there to save them from. And I think he's handled that really admirably. To have been in the spotlight for this long and to be relatively sane, uh, at least publicly relatively sane, is a real achievement.

And so I think that's usually the lens that I consider him through.

I did want to ask you one last question here. The The kid from Akron is now the dad in LA, and we've seen so much. We've seen everything in his career very publicly. We've seen him, his family life, succeed, I guess, for lack of a better term. While some people will sit there and say, "Ah, the kid from Akron's a term that he wants to use, blah, blah, blah. It's, you know, it's all about money. It's all about trademarking, what have you." If I'm a kid from Akron, I find great power in that sentence, and I see not only a great athlete, but I see a man whose life has played out publicly before us seemingly with no missteps and with all the success you could ever want, again, including family. How impactful is that statement for Northeast Ohio, for children from Akron, even back then when LeBron was a youth to right now?

I think right now it's still massively impactful because there's still remnants of LeBron's legacy all throughout Akron. There's I Promise School, Akron St. Vincent St. Mary wears LeBron uniforms now. They're like a LeBron James specific branded school. And you can drive by the places where he was a kid, you know, be it his house or these basketball courts. And I think that looks— a big part of There's Always This Here is being evangelical, evangelizing about the reality that to be from a place can matter. Doesn't always matter, but it can matter a great deal. And to love a place, to endure a love for a place, even though that place will not always love you back evenly, and you might always love it back evenly. There's a pride in that. And the pride in that, I think, comes when you ask yourself the question of what does it mean to make it out of somewhere? And sometimes to make it out of somewhere means you do get to become a megastar athlete. But sometimes to make it out of somewhere just means that you are beloved where you are. And in that, to use that logic, a kid from Akron, yes, that is surely a branding slogan to some degree.

But what it's also saying is the Akron is flexible. We're all a kid. There was even this idea of like, we're all a kid from somewhere. And to use that framework and say, I am from this place and I love this place, and I would like to leave a mark on this place so that when I am no longer here, be it geographically here, physically here, whatever, people who did not know me and did not have any experience knowing me can say, that person did something good for this place, and I would like to do something good for that place. That's making it, even if you just planted a garden. Even if you just repainted the lines on a basketball court and put some nets up. And so I think, yeah, the slogan of it all is a slogan, but what exists beyond the slogan is just saying that you, from wherever you are, can make an impact on a place you love, and that is making it as well.

Before we let you go, I want to thank you. I want to thank you personally for writing your book. Hit a lot of notes for me, and I don't know what age you found that perspective, but thank you for sharing it with all of us over the years.

No doubt. Thank you all so much for your time. Thank you. Sehr gut, sehr gut, sehr gut!

Sehr gut?

Wieso Steuer ist sehr gut?

Das sagen ganz viele!

Wer sagt das?

Stiftung Warentest, Computerbild, Focus Money, Chip, Finanztipp. Such dir was aus!

Mega!

Aber das ist doch bestimmt kompliziert. Nö, einfach Foto von der Lohnsteuerbescheinigung machen und fertig. Klingt sehr gut.

Ist sehr gut. Mit Wieso Steuer bis zum 31.

Juli abgeben.

We've covered a lot of ground off the court with LeBron. Let's do a quick museum exhibit of LeBron's time in Los Angeles on the court. 2018, he chose the Lakers, the only franchise— maybe the Knicks, right? The only franchise who maybe could be bigger than LeBron, or as big as LeBron. This came after a meeting with Magic Johnson, speaking of big-time Lakers, who was then the president of basketball operations for the Lakers. Didn't meet with Kobe, which I think was discussed at the time. The Lakers coach at the time, Luke Walton, yes, he told ESPN's Ramona Shelbourne that he celebrated the LeBron news by calling his dad, Bill Walton, who was at a Grateful Dead show, fittingly for this show, with the drummer Mickey Hart, and that their response was, quote, The rhythm is the answer to everything in life.

Ha!

Useless. Absolutely useless.

Fundamentally nonsensical.

Dan, we understood why LeBron came to Miami and we understood why he went back to Cleveland. Why did you think he was making this move?

I thought it was the way for him to evolve the economy of all the things that he is, to maximize the dollars, uh, that he could make around basketball by opening doors in Hollywood to take the punctuation of his career into a totally different growth space. I was surprised to learn the other day that he has been with the Lakers longer continuously than he was at the beginning with Cleveland. And so he's been— yeah, 8 years in Hollywood being near the Hollywood sign with the intent of making sure that he perfectly developed with his team how to make all of the other moves that are business-related where he could support the basketball economy.

But doesn't that change your answer to what LeBron is really about? If he's about legacy, then this last thing should have been about championships, should have been about as, uh, creating a greater legacy with the Lakers than maybe even Shaquille O'Neal. Like, if it was just about the business side of it, does that just change sort of of who we think LeBron is.

I didn't say it was just about that, by the way, because he can choose all the things. Right.

I think, so this is the wild part, and it'll all lead back to legacy. Because I remember this argument, where we were saying, well, most of your Hollywood business type things that are gonna happen are gonna happen in the off-season. You live in Brentwood anyway, he has a home in Brentwood, so do you need to play for the Lakers for that to happen? And I remember thinking about it a lot, you know, why, why? And I finally, I think I landed on he did it for legacy, but not necessarily in the way that we think of championships or breaking records or doing it in a Laker uniform, although I think all of those things contribute. I think he was looking at his kids and he said, if my kids, starting with Bronny, obviously is the older one, They're going to have a meaningful chance at playing professional basketball on an NBA level. They can't do it playing high school basketball in Ohio. They have to go to a more high-profile place where they'll play on a more high-profile high school team, where they'll play on a more high-profile AAU team, and that is the, the best path for their basketball career.

Which in turn fuels my basketball legacy. 'Cause what is a greater legacy than I got to play with my son? Something that no one has ever done in this city.

There's another layer to that too, which is interesting because he was born, raised in Northeast Ohio and played there. But now he's bringing his family to LA. It's like, hey, I'm not just going to play there for you. We're all coming. We're all, well, they were already there, but we're all coming to LA. And we're, and this is, you embrace us as a whole. And this, we're all family. Because that's where the LA fans, from what I understand, and help me if I'm wrong here, I mean, have not necessarily fully embraced LeBron.

Well, no, but that's like something that has nothing to do with him. Rather than saying, oh man, we're Lakers, we won again, we got— again, we got one of the best players ever to play for us, they view him as you're the enemy and now you're infringing upon the hallowed ground that Kobe Bryant walk down. And then obviously the passing of Kobe Bryant fairly early into the LeBron tenure further exacerbates that. So there's— you can never have the moment where Kobe says, guys, you're being ridiculous, you're Laker fans, right? Be happy for this, be happy for this championship. You don't get that because Kobe's not with us anymore. Yeah, so I think for certain, like, that factors in, but I don't— it's not so much a LeBron thing so much as it is a Laker fan kind of I don't know what you want to call it, dementia or whatever.

Well, or was it just demanding? Because they'd got these guys, the Kobys, the Shaqs, the Kareem Abdul-Jabars, either in their prime or at the beginning of their careers. And so with LeBron, you're getting in at the tail end of his career. They want to embrace him. But then when Kobe passes, you remember he had that sort of pregame speech in January of 2020, and it was awkward. There was a lot of me and my in there.

Kobe is a brother to me, and from the time I was in high school to watching him afar, to getting in this league at 18, watching him up close, all the battles that we had throughout my career, the one thing that we always shared is that determination to just want to win and just want to be great. And the fact that I'm here now means so much to me I want to continue along with my teammates to continue his legacy, not only for this year, but as long as we can play the game of basketball that we love, because that's what Kobe Bryant would want.

It just didn't feel like he felt the embrace from the fans, and I think Kobe passing made that even worse. It's more of like a separation.

Yeah.

Dan, I'm wondering how you viewed this in terms of just from your perspective down here, like, is it worth it to be over there completing your career story while the fans never really thought you were one of them?

He made an interesting journey throughout what he was doing to go from famous to infamous, and along the path he was embraced in Cleveland at the beginning, rejected.

Mm-hmm.

Then he came to Miami. He's embraced by Miami, but he's rejected by everyone else. And then the punctuation is to go to the popular team. And you said at the tail end of his career, tail end my ass. It's 8 years. And he's over here saying, not incorrectly, he was thinking about the kids. But when you mention delusion or the idea of delusion, for him at 33 to be thinking he's going to play with his son at 40 is asinine to even consider that as possible. I'm not saying that like obviously he did it, but for him to dream like that is just— it's lunacy.

Yeah, it's crazy because I think when he, when he made the move, it was more about I want to give my kids a chance. If my kid is going to play in the NBA, we know kind of like it's almost down to a formula now. You got to play in this kind of—

you did it.

And like, this is how you get looks from high-level D1s and all that stuff. And then as time goes by, holy shit, I think I could actually still be around while this year. I mean, it's, it's As ridiculous as it was even 2 years ago to talk about that, now we're like, could he hang on long enough for Bryce to be an NBA player? Now that's a reality where I— obviously in 2018 there's no way he thought I could be here long enough.

Those kids of his, I'm hoping that, uh, they're not too eager to have children right now, only because I don't want to think of LeBron playing as a grandfather, an actual grandfather.

I want to keep digging in on Bronny, uh, a little bit here, but Let's just slow down and go to the summer of 2020, which was after the COVID shutdown and we restart the season. LeBron wins his fourth title in the bubble, actually in the fall of 2020. And I want to play for you his Finals MVP acceptance speech. He's at a social distance from Adam Silver and with Lakers GM Rob Pelinka far in the background.

We just want our respect. Rob wants his respect. Coach Vogel wants his respect. Our organization want their respect. Laker Nation want their respect. And I want my damn respect too. I just hope I make my guys proud, and that's all that matters to me. I made my guys proud, make the fan base proud, my family back home. I can't wait to get back home to them. Akron, Ohio, we did it again. And, um, you know, that's what it's all about.

What a contrast from Cleveland, right? But But are we to actually believe that LeBron James felt disrespected at the time? I mean, what was I missing at the time? Oh, of course.

He always feels disrespected. That's part and parcel of all of these guys.

But who's LeBron talking to?

God, fuck if I know, man. That's part of the delusion. That's what we're talking about. It's like, hey, this is what you need. You need these ghosts, these specters floating around you whispering in your ear how you're not good enough.

Can you guys play that again? Just you could, so you can see how vigorously Rob Pelinka nodded when LeBron asked or demanded, demanded that Rob get his respect.

We just want our respect. Rob wants his respect.

Coach Vogel wants his respect.

I do.

I really do.

Thanks, LeBron.

I want my damn respect too.

Let me tell you something. Rob Palenka is in the top 1% of making other people feel good. Like, in this— like, it was what made him an amazing agent and has made the GM part of his life simultaneously more difficult and also easier. More difficult because you can't do that when you're negotiating against other people. They don't give a shit, right? Like, these other GMs, they don't care. But it does help for, again, building up his players and making them believe in a vision that sometimes may not even exist. But him doing that right there, like, that's vintage Rafa Linka right there. It's like, you tell him, LeBron, you're so smart.

I mean, what would that have looked like if he wins that title in LA in front of the LA fans?

Right. So we're removing COVID. There was no COVID. They went in 6. So it would have been— it would have been in Miami. That they would have won. So people would have been at home celebrating, and then you get a parade— because they didn't get a parade— you get a parade. I think there's a couple things. I think certainly people would have been more joyous. Not that the bubble championship is less valuable or, or not as real, or asterisk, or any other ridiculous talk, but the fact that it happened in a sanitized environment, not amongst the people, and then there was no joyous celebration of the city.

I don't remember the embrace of LeBron as our superhero. I think you're— and maybe the lack of a parade, that was the reason.

I don't think, I don't think it ever gets to that, because what I said earlier about the Kobe Bryant thing, they never were going to, because in their mind, if we do that, we've turned our back on Kobe. The only thing that could have saved it was if Kobe Bryant came out again. Kobe, if Kobe's alive and they win a championship and Kobe's at the parade and Kobe says you guys need to give this motherfucker his respect. Then I think they say they bend the knee to what Kobe says. But without that very explicit stamp of approval, they were never going to embrace him. But they would have loved him a lot more, I think, had they had the opportunity to celebrate that championship like normal.

So is it quite possible, as we sort of shift topics here back to Bronny, as you said earlier, I mean, that his legacy, his greater legacy legacy with the Los Angeles Lakers won't be title number— what is it, 18 for Los Angeles? But it will be playing with Bronny James, getting Bronny James not just to play with him but getting him a legitimate NBA career. Dan, do you think that is more legacy, uh, or do you think people view that more as nepotism and something that he just sort of gets to pile on to his career?

There's almost nothing that he does that isn't examined as art is in a way that doesn't have 100% consensus on one side about what it is. So I'm sitting here saying I think he went to Los Angeles because he wanted Hollywood, and Amin saying he did it for the kids. And I don't actually know who is right there, but the romanticism of being able to play with your son and at every turn— I think this is important to LeBron. To feel like he has earned the freedom and right to make all of his own choices in adulthood and get every single thing that he wants from a career that continues to produce a bounty of fruit that doesn't have a whole lot of precedent. To be able to punctuate your career in that particular city with the choices that you've made and also get the team that is that powerful to draft your son and put him on the payroll so that you can have a forever playground that has your every whim desired is as much of an accomplishment at the end of his career as many of the things that he produced before.

Well, I mean, he calls it the number one accomplishment of his career.

Yeah. I mean, of course, as a dad, of course. Why wouldn't he feel that way? I think Dan actually hit on what it is, which is LeBron James has maximized being a superstar more than any other human being, perhaps in any team sport. In history. The amount of things he's been able to do by leveraging his stardom, it far exceeds anything that Michael Jordan did, far exceeds anything that Tom Brady did, far exceeds anything that Mike Trout did. Now, I don't know who would be the— but you see what I'm saying? Like, in terms of all of it, everything, I want it all. I want to be the best. I want to play on a team that's competing for championships. And I wanna make every last dollar. I'm not gonna leave anything on the table. That, and then also, oh, my son is a prospect, I wanna play with him. And I don't want him to be on a make-good contract, I want his deal guaranteed. And I'm gonna make this movie, and I'm gonna have my friends go from people who are on my payroll to people who are creating their own wealth and name and blazing their own trails.

Everything that he wanted to do. I want to go back home after they, they, they were burning my jersey, and I want to win a championship there that no one has ever won. I want to be the first player to win 3 Finals MVPs with 3 different organizations. I want to build a school in my hometown. I want to marry my high school sweetheart and stay married to her the whole time and present a strong Black family that is unified.

And when you list it like that, he's got a lot of things to choose.

Dude, like, think about it.

There's a lot of shit there that's like Yeah, Michael Jordan can't say that, right? Like, you want to talk about legacy, that's the legacy. It's like, hey, if I'm a superstar coming up, what do I want? The bar has been set.

We haven't even talked about this, him doing something that wasn't done for him. Like, his dad wasn't around, so now he is not only accomplishing this but fathering, you know, parenting his son into the NBA. Say what you will about obviously LeBron's, uh, help getting him there, like, that's got to be like a just heart pumping out of your chest type of proud.

Paving a road from whence there was no road before, right? There wasn't even a dirt path.

Yeah, but not just paving it for the kid from Akron, paving it where Tom Brady and Aaron Rodgers are looking and are like, wait a minute, right? How much power do I actually have? Like, to blaze the path for those guys.

That's the— right? It's yes for his family, yes, but more so, like I said, any superstar athlete coming up now whether it's Patrick Mahomes, whether it's Shohei Ohtani, whether it's Anthony Edwards or Victor Wembanyama, whatever. That's the bar. It's like, oh, how much did you get out of this? 'Cause that's all it is really, right? You're famous, you're rich, you play in front of the people. You are a Roman gladiator fighting lions for the amusement of the fans in the crowd, right? What are you getting out of this? For Spartacus and them, maybe I'll get free. I win this and I'll be free.

Athlete.

For the modern-day athlete, it's been, oh, here's all this money and this fame. And LeBron said, not enough, I want more, I want more.

Why do I have to have a cap on my salary? If you're going to cap my salary, I'm going to make sure you can't cap anything else.

Cap on my salary? How about cap on what I'm allowed to do, what I'm able to do, right?

There's also no cap on how heartfelt the situation is when you consider Bronnie had a heart attack at 18. Yeah, that's insane. Like, obviously if that were to happen to a child of yours, maybe you'd rethink everything, but yet he's still in the uniform playing right next to him. It's just got to melt you with pride.

I mean, how could it not? And so we go back to what is legacy? Is legacy 30,000, 35,000 points scored or whatever it is? Is legacy 4 titles, 5 titles, 6 titles, 7 titles, right? Is legacy winning Finals MVP at age 40-plus? Is that legacy? Or is legacy, like you said, like, my fam— look at my family, look at what I, what I've done, look at how the obstacles that they've had to overcome, right? Bronny didn't have to grow up in the, the poverty that LeBron did. Bronny didn't have to wonder all these things and, and bounce around and and deal with a parent that's dealing with substance abuse or any of those things. But LeBron never had to have a heart attack as a teenager. And that's, you know, you say all you have is your health. Like, that's a big one right there.

All right. So let's fast forward a little bit more. What does he look like in retirement? Let's just say he doesn't win another title or doesn't win 1,000 more titles. There's still a debate between him and MJ. We're in 2030. Does he own a team? Is he on— is he broadcasting somewhere? Are there even television networks.

Yeah, is the Earth still here? These are all relevant questions, ladies and gentlemen. So I can't see him working for a broadcaster in the traditional sense. The late Kobe Bryant, when he was doing Detail, right, Detail was aired on ESPN. It was not an ESPN-owned and produced product. Kobe owned and produced that, and then it was aired. So I would think something like that. If he is doing broadcasting work, it is on his terms and he is getting paid not as talent, but as the owner.

LBJ Network.

As the owner of the content. As the owner of the content. Now, in terms of what else he could be doing, he's talked about a lot wanting to be an owner of an NBA team. I think that is a goal. I think it's a goal that he'll be able to achieve. It'll be part of an ownership group. It won't be most of his money up front.

Does location really matter for those guys or any teams?

Again, there's only 30 of these. There'll be 32 soon, but it doesn't seem like any time soon. At whatever point he has an opportunity to buy it, you get in where you can get in. And obviously if it's somewhere, if it's— maybe it's Dan Gilbert who gives him a stake. I don't know. I don't think he wants a stake. I don't think he wants to do Dwyane Wade, which is, I have influence, I have a voice, and I have a stake in the team. Like, no, I want people to say LeBron James owns this team in the same way people said Michael Jordan own the Charlotte Hornets. Where that'll happen, I think whenever the opportunity presents itself to him.

A long time ago, after Michael Jordan had retired, I went to do a magazine piece with him that sort of followed him over and around Asia. And I remember, like, at the Great Wall of China and an assortment of things, as I was thinking about my own middle age, I thought to myself how hard it must be specific typically for Michael Jordan, symbol for athletic youth and vitality for the world, to age and try to find the things in retirement that felt like basketball did. He will search for them. He will have power. He will have ownership of whatever he does. I don't think there's any chance that he's in front of a microphone unless it's to create a media empire of some sort around him. But all of it will feel comparatively, obviously, emptier than what it is that he'd been doing for the last 25 years. He's going to be court adjacent, but that's different from being on the court. And whatever it is that satiates him in terms of conquering can never feel quite the same as the rock star adulation of being the most vital person in athletics who doesn't seem to age even as he ages.

I don't think it's about— with him specifically, And dare I say it, even with Michael Jordan, whose fame, while isn't as high as it was during its peak, it hasn't dissipated that much, right? I don't think it's about that for them. I think it is— it's about, quite simply, control. That these guys, when they were doing the thing that they did best, the thing that they had was control. I control what's happening here. And then what Michael discovered is when you go upstairs and you trade it in for a suit and tie, no matter how much I talk to these guys and how much— I don't have control over this. This shit's just happening and I just gotta trust. And that's the part I think LeBron James, we talked about so many times in the course of this series, how much control over his image, over this, over that, his career, and the leverages he hold. What happens when you lose the ultimate leverage, which is me playing? Because all that other stuff has some leverage to it. I'm LeBron James. Yeah, that has leverage to it. I'm immensely rich. I have leverage to it.

My best friends are him, him, and her. That all has leverage. It's not as much leverage as I play, I'm the best at this, and if you have me playing, we'll go places. But if you piss me off, I'll leave.

The reason that I'm bringing it up though, because it was an odd thing to feel and think around Michael Jordan. I felt a certain sadness for him sort of limping up The Great Wall of China because I'm like, it must be especially hard for this person to age. Given that we spent so much time talking about LeBron James's power, what you're talking about now with an absence of control is something that powerful people rarely feel when they have all that power, which is a helplessness that doesn't usually come with power because you're watching others, you're witness to others doing things and I can't imagine the difficulties that come with your identity, as he said before, of corpses and produce starts decaying.

It reminds— man, this is going to sound real crazy. Robert Mugabe, you guys know who that is? He was the president of Zimbabwe, right? He was the president of Zimbabwe for like 40 years, right? From like 1987 all the way to like 2017.

This is exactly where I thought this was all going. Yeah, right?

He was like— he was He was the prime minister, the leader of Zimbabwe for a long time, right? In 2017, he finally steps down, and my dad said he'll be dead in like a year. He died a year later.

I mean, we are not killing LeBron James.

No, I'm just—

I'm not saying that.

I'm just saying that power—

What a dark turn this turned for the immortal.

Power, absolute power is an elixir, but also It's a drug. And like the most vicious of drugs, you take someone off of it, that crashes hard.

Look, we just spent 6 episodes talking about a guy's career that's not even over yet, okay? So I think it's fair to say that LeBron James is the greatest basketball story from beginning to end ever told. And so if I'm going to get in a time machine and go forward to see how this story ends, to me it can only end in one way. He is the lead owner of the Cleveland Cavaliers and his two boys are on the team and he's sitting courtside watching them play. That's the end of the story. He defeated the villain in Dan Gilbert. He helped everybody and he got his family. And it's just like, that's how I just want to cross his legs and fade to black right there.

Well then, oh, fade back up. And then he goes to Secaucus to sit at the dais for the ping pong balls. Because if Bronny and Bryce are both on the Cavs, that team's winning 17 games.

Legacy, baby.