Superteams soon became the norm. \u201cIt was a turning point for the league,\u201d says five-time All-Star Kevin Love, who played with James and Kyrie Irving during James\u2019 second tour with the Cavs. \u201cYou know who has the power here. In the past, it was always ownership and the front office. LeBron completely flipped that on its axis.\u201d<\/p>\n
James\u2019 move proved prescient, but he was villainized at the time. He embraced the black hat during his first year in Miami. The low point came in the 2011 NBA Finals, where the Heat dropped Game 6 at home, giving the Dallas Mavericks the title. Johnson had four championships in his first eight seasons, Bird three, Jordan two. James zilch.<\/p>\n
After the series, James, who scored nearly 9 points per game below his regular-season average in those Finals, seemed to take solace in the misery of others. \u201cAll the people that was rooting on me to fail, at the end of the day, they got to wake up tomorrow, have the same life that they had before they woke up today,\u201d he said at a press conference. \u201cThey got the same personal problems they had today.\u201d<\/p>\n
While James now admits he could have been more diplomatic, he regrets nothing\u2014those comments, making The Decision a TV show, none of it. \u201cThe best teacher in life is experience,\u201d he says. \u201cI learned from that moment. I see how that could have been taken. But f-ck, I was angry. I was mad. I was sad. I got stomped on all year. And I let the media get the best of me.\u201d<\/p>\n
James transformed his arc that offseason. \u201cThat\u2019s not you, bro,\u201d he says. \u201cGet back to who you are.\u201d He traveled to Houston to train with Hall of Famer Hakeem Olajuwon, who taught him footwork tricks. In 2012 and 2013, James won back-to-back MVPs, and the Heat back-to-back NBA titles.<\/p>\n
He made strides as a human too. James pushed his foundation to do more than host one-off events, like his annual bike-a-thon. \u201cThat loss was the best thing that ever happened to the LeBron James Family Foundation,\u201d says Michele Campbell, executive director of James\u2019 nonprofit. \u201cWe had some deep conversations about what we were doing and frankly, where we were missing the mark.\u201d Since then, the organization has started the I Promise School<\/a> in Akron, for grades 3 through 8, and funded college scholarships for 25 community members who\u2019ve earned degrees. It\u2019s built affordable housing, provided job training and health care services, and, in April, opened a restaurant, Buckets, which employs more than 70 locals and serves, among other items, \u201cThe GOAT\u201d smashburger.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Superteams soon became the norm. \u201cIt was a turning point for the league,\u201d says five-time All-Star Kevin Love,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":725573,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[64,63,726,10967,77478,85],"class_list":["post-725572","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-basketball","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-basketball","tag-franchise","tag-list","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/725572","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=725572"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/725572\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/725573"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=725572"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=725572"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=725572"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}