He got this one right.

LeBron James got this one right. His "decision" in 2010 was a narcissistic disaster and the fact that he didn't realize that until 2012 only made it worse. People jokingly referred to his free agency this season as "indecision" or "decision 2.0", but he was determined to keep this one on the down low and handle things right. He refused to open his mouth the entire time. He didn't even publicly meet any teams except the heat - he owed that much to Pat Riley and the gang out of courtesy, if not anything else. And he didn't even have a press conference to announce his signing. He wrote a letter penned by Lee Jenkins on SI and flew away to Brazil. The letter (http://www.si.com/nba/2014/07/11/lebron-james-cleveland-cavaliers) was beautifully penned and ends with a "I am coming home" message which was music to many ears, including mine. The letter struck all the right notes and touched on everything relevant.

LeBron in that letter came off as a humble, loyal, home-sick, forgiving,  apologetic, superstar and he also made sure he drove the fan expectations down - a far cry from the "not 6, not 7" days. He gained a lot of fans back and a championship or two in Ohio is going to make him incredibly popular and we might finally have a legitimate threat to Michael Jordan for GOAT - Greatest Of All Time. He definitely knows what he is doing here and is trying to go in a different direction to build a unique legacy. He is way past just the ring counts - he is not winning that argument anyways since he has already lost 3 finals. MJ is 6-0 and LeBron is 2-3. But winning for his small-market home town and a resume along the lines of 4 championships and 8 finals appearance or something like that in addition to all the ridiculous stats he is already putting up is going to be hard to ignore.

He gave us all a feel-good, cool story and you don't have to be a Cleveland cavs fan to appreciate this.  Some of the LeBron apologists in the media were calling us all "haters" when LeBron was in Miami. They missed a basic point. Fans don't owe their fandom to anybody! I am not beholden to like LeBron or anybody just because he jumps the highest for his dunks or drops the sweetest dimes. Fans have every right to like or hate anybody for any reason as long as they keep it civil and don't make it personal. No fan asked to put LeBron in jail for leaving Cleveland in 2010, but he or she had every right to like LeBron in 2009 and change their mind and not like him in 2011. We see this everyday when athletes change teams and fans go from cheering to booing or vice versa just based on the laundry. We accept this, but somehow some people in the media didn't get why people disliked LeBron after the "decision." The "decision" took a feel good, small market, home town story away and some fans lost all incentive to pull for LeBron once he moved to Miami.

Fans don't owe the athletes anything. After all, fans pay LeBron, it's not the other way around. Customer is God in any business and it's LeBron's job to impress the customer.  The "decision" did the exact opposite - both the modus operandi and the end result were wrong in the minds of many fans. May be because the media is so involved with the sport and LeBron was clearly the best basketball player in the world, some people in the media couldn't see why people did not like or root for LeBron. Well, I hate the term "casual fans", but casual fans like or dislike an athlete for many reasons and the summer of 2010 gave them a truckload of reasons to hate LeBron. It's on him, not the fans. The league was not happy either for a completely different reason. The league made many changes in 2011 during the lockout just to prevent the kind of superstar conglomeration that the Miami heat created in the previous off-season.

One of the less appreciated aspect of the big 3 was how rare and unusual it was for 3 of the top 5 draft picks from the same draft to come together in their prime. This absolutely threatened the competitive balance and the whole logic of the draft in the NBA. Imagine a league where the top guys from every draft ganged up after their initial contracts and ended up in cities of their choice. Though, to be fair, these 3 did re-sign with their respective teams once after their rookie contracts before joining forces in 2010. But still, if LeBron, Wade, and Bosh could gang up in their prime, it would have probably been easier for guys from the other drafts to do it - given that the big 3 were superstars from a historically top-notch draft and it will cost a lot less and involve lesser egos with top picks from your typical, average draft. This scared the league as it threatened the system and the whole notion of parity and put too much power in the hands of the players. The NBA fixed it in a hurry, to the point that the same big 3 in 2014 faced much bigger problem re-signing with the heat though they were heat's own free agents this time around and had all kinds of "Bird rights".

LeBron has changed the culture of NBA free agency with his move in 2010 and superstars now are constantly trying to team up with each other. But the system has made it extremely difficult to do it. So after a lot of talk this off-season, stars were forced to go their separate ways. LeBron seems to always pioneer new ways to build a legendary career. He left town and teamed up with two other superstars who he was competing against in 2010. Now, he is going back to his small market, home team to try to win a championship for a downtrodden franchise. Few stars get a chance to do this. Neither MJ, nor Bird, nor Magic can claim to have done that. So he is charting his own course here. More power to him. It was interesting to see him hold the entire league hostage for a week without uttering a word. Everybody, including other stars were forced to wait for his move before free agency resumed again. He is wielding unprecedented power right now and wielding it well I might add. As a suns fan, I am getting ready to root for a suns-cavs finals every year. Some of us root for good things and the davids of this world against narcissistic things and the goliaths. I have no problem supporting LeBron now proving that us fans can change our mind and keep things fair if only the athlete does the "right thing". In the words of the king, "who am I to hold a grudge?"

Everything and more is riding on this game 6

This game 6 of the NBA finals is it! I can't remember a more important, historically relevant, pivotal game in the recent past of the league than this one, Two games come to mind, but even those 2 got to be important in hindsight. I had only a faint idea of the importance of those games before or during the game unlike today. Both involved the LA Lakers and both were Western Conference final games. The first was the Portland Trailblazers' epic 4-Th quarter meltdown in game 7 against the Lakers in 2000. This game had the potential to alter history. This was the year when the Kobe-Shaq championship run started and it wouldn't have if not for the Blazers choking away a comfortable lead in the 4-Th quarter. This Portland team was loaded and arguably more talented than the Lakers with Pippen, Sabonis, Steve Smith and Rasheed Wallace starting and Detlef Schrempf, Bonzi Wells, Brian Grant and a young Jermaine O'Neal coming off the bench. They were championship contenders that year and they would have won it all if they had gotten past the Lakers. That could have potentially started a Blazers dynasty and nipped the Lakers run in the bud. It might have even accelerated the Kobe-Shaq divorce and the NBA might look a lot different now, but the jail-blazers blew it all that day.

The next pivotal game was towards the end of that Lakers three-peat - Kings-Lakers game 7 in 2002. This was the game that followed the infamous game 6, but by losing game 7, Kings lost a golden opportunity to win a championship and start a run of their own. Again, they were legitimate contenders and possibly more talented than their southern Californian counterparts who were coming off a back-to-back championship. But their inexperience in game 7 (and the NBA referees in game 6) accelerated the end of a special era for the Kings. The Sacramento faithful will never forgive the NBA for that game 6. I could add another Western Conference final game to this list - the Suns V Spurs game 4 in the 2007 series where Robert "the devil" Horry hip-checked Nash onto the sideboards and Amare and Diaw got suspended for game 5 due to the ensuing altercation. This changed the whole complexion of the series and my Suns might have lost their only shot at a championship for many years to come. But I still left it off the list because who knows what would have happened in games 5 through 7 even with Amare and Diaw playing in game 5. I would like to think the Suns would have won game 5 and the series, but you never know.

Here comes game 6 tonight in the 2011 NBA finals. The Mavs have 2 shots to win this series, but seriously, would you be willing to put your 5 bucks on the Mavs winning game 7 on the road? I am not. Though if anybody can do it, this Mavs team can. They have the experience and Nowitzki to make that happen. Whoever replaced all of the blood in Nowitzki's veins with ice-cold water from Antarctica should be the MVP of this series. Nowitzki has been unbelievable throughout the playoffs! With all that said, you don't want a game 7 on the road against a team with Wade and LeBron, especially Wade. Thats what makes this game 6 the most important game ever, at least until game 7 that is! If you hated "The Decision", if you think it was stupid to "take my talents to south beach", if you were appalled by LeBron's public dumping of the Cleveland Cavs in favor of the sexier Wade and Miami, if you thought it was disgusting for the big-3 to come out of WWE-style smoke and celebrate even before winning a pre-season game - which even Wade now agrees was stupid, then you absolutely want the Mavs to win game 6. If you are like me and conform to the widely held belief acknowledged even by a whining Wade earlier in the season when he said "the world is a better place, the Heat is losing", then this is the game you want the Heat to lose. You don't want a game 7.

This game is for more than all the marbles as I see it. When he went to Miami, LeBron said "Not 1... Not 2... Not 3... Not 4... Not 5... Not 6... Not 7" referring to the number of championships they might win. This is a distinct possibility if they win their first ring this year itself. That statement sounded preposterous even halfway through the season and I still maintain that they are even lucky to be in the finals in year 1, but it becomes very real if they clinch their first ring right away. Success breeds more success and with this talented group, just their uptick in confidence after a ring this season will be an enormous addition to their repertoire. And more talented veterans will flock to them to win a sham ring and retire as a champion. Once that train starts rolling, it's hard to stop much like the 2000 Lakers. On the flip-side, a defeat tonight (and in this series) puts more self-doubt in the Heat. It might even derail the big-3 and Bosh trade rumors might start sooner than later. It will also give the necessary opening to young teams like the Bulls and the Thunder to grow and challenge the Heat both in the East and in the finals. Thats very important because those teams are almost there, but not quite. I don't think a victory tonight for the Mavs helps them a lot in terms of their future given their age, but who cares anyways! This series is all about the Heat. Nobody cares about the Mavs - we are just rooting for them!

It's amazing how even the markets that have traditionally been Dallas-haters are all pulling for them only because they hate the Heat. And Wade and LeBron's stupid coughing video before game 5 didn't win them any new friends either. There has never been a more polarizing NBA team than these Miami Heat and there is this sense of joy in people when the Heat lose or when LeBron struggles that is almost universal. Never has a superstar gone from most beloved to most hated in such a short-time and that too not because of issues involving sex, hookers or wives. Now LeBron is trying to turn that around and reclaim his most-beloved spot again and it starts with tonight's game. Thats why this game is so important for those on the other side. If you are one of those guys or girls who believes the integrity and the moral fabric of this culture is dependent on LeBron losing, then you want him to lose game 6. Game 7 is too risky and Nowitzki's shoulders are too slender for us to place the weight of the World on it on Tuesday. But that game 7, if it ever happens would be one of the most entertaining and engrossing NBA game in ages. May be since 2002, when the NBA "fixed" game 6 to force the aforementioned game 7 between the Lakers and the Kings. These finals have already been one of the best series and many bet that the NBA wants a game 7 and will get it. Time will tell, and we don't have to wait a long time, just a few hours before this question is answered. I personally want and expect the Mavs to win tonight.