LeBron James and All the Shit He Has to Deal With

LeBron James wants us to like and admire him. This is a banal desire, but filtered through the prism of his celebrity, the best basketball player in the world's careful self-presentation produces an uncanny, unceasing commercial during which the star intermittently ducks behind a privacy screen to change costumes, then begins to sell us a product that is slightly different from the one he was previously peddling. The various public personas LeBron has assumed over the years obscure the man beneath and make only one thing entirely clear: he has not yet found the pitch he is searching for, the one that will make us to interpret him the way he wants to be interpreted.

LeBron has, at different points of his career, played the part of a young messiah, an ultra-gregarious super-teammate, a villain, and a superstar in repose, with varying degrees of surety. Having left that last mask in Miami, he now fancies himself a leader of men. "I will be the old head [in Cleveland]," he said in his famous return letter. "But I get a thrill out of bringing a group together and helping [my teammates] reach a place they didn't know they could go."

This LeBron-as-Churchillian-figure shift didn't occur all at once, the moment he made his homecoming official. In his final season with the Heat, James was noticeably laboring to advance the notion that he wasn't just a great player, but a superior motivator and coach-on-the-floor type. Upon moving back to northeast Ohio, he began to push that narrative even harder. Through his mouthpiece of choice, Sports Illustrated's Lee Jenkins, LeBron informed the world he had spent the summer reading books on management styles, and he stated on several occasions his intent to be the undisputed leader of a youngish Cavs squad that needed his help. His first post-return Nike ad depicted the entire city of Cleveland huddled around him, hanging on his every word.

In the wake of all this bluster and pomp, it has been a letdown to see that LeBron's leadershipping consists primarily of passive-aggressive dickishness. In early November, James copped to playing at half-speed and allowing his teammates to fail in order to prove some larger point about unity and sacrifice. He has occasionally ignored and undermined David Blatt, and he didn't exactly lend his support to the first-time NBA head coach when fans were calling for Blatt's job. In early December, when the Cavs' honeymoon period was rapidly dissipating due to genuine concerns the team might suck, LeBron acted out for quarters at a time, whipping passes with extra oomph, walking to the bench in a huff during timeouts, and generally oozing disdain for his colleagues. Subsequent games in which he got demonstrably chummy with Dwyane Wade and Kobe Bryant scanned as one parent complaining to another about the frustrations of child-rearing. You understand what I have to put up with, eh Kobe? James seemed to be saying.

This condescension-heavy approach to team-building has either moved Kyrie Irving or the he's thriving in spite of it, because after a rocky start, he has fit comfortably into a secondary scorer role. However, Kevin Love is still in the proverbial weeds, and even worse, LeBron's needling appears to irritate and confound him. Last week, James told the press "I get [Love] good looks. I want him to shoot the ball, and he needs to shoot it with confidence." Love responded by saying he doesn't think he's passing up open shots. On Saturday night, LBJ doubled down by subtweeting his put-upon teammate, imploring him to fit into the squad. After Love put up 32 points and 10 rebounds in a blowout win over the Lakers, Cavs beat writer Jason Lloyd brought James's tweet to Love's attention, which birthed this injured-sounding quote:

"I feel like I've done all the right things. I haven't got upset or been down. There's moments when I hope I would've played better but it's a long, long season. I don't know really what [LeBron]'s talking about. I feel like I've sacrificed, and I think everyone knows that. I'm not trying to downplay what he said, but I think I've done a pretty good job of trying to help this team."

Also in that Lloyd article is an instance of James laying himself as bare as he ever has. Asked if he considers post-game bullshit sessions with local reporters to be on or off the record, LeBron responds: "Ain't nothing off the record. I know everything that comes out of my mouth. If I say it, it's on the record." In other words, all his public actions are part of a grand performance.

This acute (and acutely specific) self-awareness seems to cause LeBron to conceive of himself as existing on two planes at once. He lives in the present, but is almost always thinking about how what he's doing now will be construed in the future—in both post-game write-ups and the minds of NBA fans who haven't yet been born. As he acts out this drama with Love, you can hear him recounting it to his memoir's ghostwriter. Kevin took some time to come around, but once I convinced him to buy in, we accomplished great things together.

Perhaps the weight of not-yet-recorded history explains LeBron's cruelty toward Love. The latter is playing for a championship, the former is attempting to execute his ambitious plan in a way that will legitimize his claims that he's a mentor par excellence. Because of this, he is an edgy and aggrieved perfectionist. LeBron knows he has time—but only so much time—to get Kevin Love right, and while James is fragile in some respects, he's also mightily hubristic. He's certain that he's a phenomenal leader. Once Loves sees that, the rest of us will, too.