Return of the King

Chapter 1

ALL NOT FOR Z

The lights were shut off, and for a moment, the crowd of 20,000 roared with the sudden excitement of anticipation. Just as quickly they fell silent. A million-dollar 3-D video projection system, leased and installed in the ceiling for this moment, lit the arena with a mixture of visual tricks that made it seem like the hardwood floor was as liquid as water, followed by an incredible display of video highlights, graphics, colors, and audio clips that took programmers weeks to design.

Watching from the darkness at the edge of the room were dozens of men in suits, all flown in at great expense by the Cleveland Cavaliers franchise, to be tangential parts of the most elaborate jersey retirement ceremony the NBA had ever seen. Not even Michael Jordan had gotten the sort of treatment Zydrunas Ilgauskas was getting on this night.

It was March 8, 2014, a carefully selected date that was months in the planning and years in the plotting.

After speeches and congratulations from numerous former teammates, coaches, team executives, trainers, and friends—and after his father, who'd come from Lithuania, symbolically kissed the center-court logo—Ilgauskas's two sons punched a button that sent his No. 11 jersey to the rafters as smoke machines billowed to make it more dramatic.

Fans recorded it with their cell phones, many wearing giveaway T-shirts in the team's wine and gold color scheme that read "#AllforZ."

This was charming, but it also wasn't totally true. It wasn't all for Z, Ilgauskas's nickname. A lot of it was for someone else, one of the men in the sea of suits.

This was also for LeBron James.

The Cavs' thinly veiled strategy to recruit James back four years after his departure clicked into public action with this expensive investment. Retire Ilgauskas's number, yes, but also show James he could come home again and he would be loved again just like his peer.

In 2010, just three days after James announced he was signing with the Miami Heat on a national television broadcast and while Cavs fans and owner Dan Gilbert were still in a hot rage, Ilgauskas announced his intention to follow James to Miami as a free agent. After twelve years as a Cav, making two All-Star teams and setting a slate of franchise records, this move was seen as adding insult to injury.

Ilgauskas soon got in on the blowback James had gotten for his choice. There was plenty of vitriol from the Cleveland area to go around. James's departure, announced on an hourlong television show on ESPN, The Decision, had deeply scarred the region. It was devastating to the team, but James was also a local leaving for the glamour of Miami. That hit a lot of people where they lived. In an economic downturn that had lasted for decades, many children of Northeast Ohio had left home looking for success outside the rust belt. Ohio is home to numerous well-respected universities, both large state institutions and small liberal arts colleges. For years it had raised and educated young stars only to see them take their talents elsewhere because of limited opportunities at home. It was a compound problem. Now James, one of the state's most treasured citizens, was doing it too.

Targeting James for the way he announced his decision was a convenient excuse for amplifying the symbols of hatred. Many would've hated James for leaving no matter how he'd done it. Ilgauskas was proof of that. After deciding to leave, Ilgauskas bought a full-page ad in the Cleveland Plain Dealer thanking the fan base for taking him in when he arrived from Lithuania and supporting him so it would become his home. If it dimmed any of the negativity, it was hard for him to notice.

It was hurtful to Ilgauskas, who had actually been traded away from the Cavs the previous season, only to get a buyout from his new team, the Washington Wizards, before ever playing a game so he could immediately re-sign in Cleveland. Having already been traded and after losing his starting job when the Cavs acquired Shaquille O'Neal the previous year, Ilgauskas felt he'd been given a pretty good indication the team was moving on from him as a core player.

Perhaps the worst was when it started to affect his wife, Jennifer, who owns successful healthcare-related businesses in the Cleveland area. Her business started suffering when standard referrals began drying up, which Ilgauskas believed was a kind of retribution. He was also booed mercilessly when he returned with the Heat.

But after his retirement in 2011, Ilgauskas proved how he felt about the city when he moved back. He later went to work for the team's front office. This was a minor miracle, because Ilgauskas was also offended by an infamous letter to fans Gilbert released the night James announced he was leaving, calling James's move a "shocking act of disloyalty" and a "cowardly betrayal." Ilgauskas felt like some of those accusations now essentially included him as well.

Ilgauskas and Gilbert had never been very close. In 2005, four months after Gilbert bought the Cavs for $375 million, Ilgauskas thought he'd have to find a new home. He was a free agent and got the impression Gilbert wasn't interested in retaining him. In early July of that year he was about to leave on a planned trip to Asia, figuring he might be on another team by the time he got back.

Danny Ferry, a former Ilgauskas teammate who'd just been hired to be the team's general manager, convinced Gilbert to re-sign Ilgauskas. Ferry was concerned about the owner-player relationship, so he asked Gilbert to close the deal personally. This led to a fascinating little chase as Gilbert and newly hired coach Mike Brown left the Cavs' Summer League team in Las Vegas on Gilbert's plane to fly to Los Angeles to catch Ilgauskas during a layover before he left for Hong Kong.

When they landed at LAX's private terminal, Gilbert ran into Howard Schultz, the founder of Starbucks and later the owner of the Seattle SuperSonics. Gilbert blanched, knowing the Sonics were a team rumored to be interested in Ilgauskas as well. He wondered if he was being beaten to the punch. Out of a movie script, Gilbert ordered his driver to follow Schultz's car to see where he might be headed. But Schultz got on the freeway; Gilbert and Brown breathed a sigh of relief and went to the international terminal, where they bought tickets on Ilgauskas's flight so they could get through security. Nervous they had nothing to present, they bought cheap flowers and balloons at an airport gift shop to bring to the meeting. When it was over, Ilgauskas had agreed to a five-year, $50 million deal.

That ended up being the high point of the relationship, especially after Gilbert's behavior when Ilgauskas and James left. Yet not only was Ilgauskas back working for the team, here he was being adored by fans at a ceremony.

That was the understated but serious message to James. The two had commiserated in Miami about how they'd been treated for their business decisions. They'd cursed Gilbert and the shortsightedness of fans who'd once claimed to love them. They'd basked in the winter sun and wondered how they'd lived through so many snowstorms.

But Ilgauskas was back in the cold North and happy to be raising his family there. And here he was being honored, the fans already having forgotten his foray to Miami. That is what those in the Cavs organization wanted James to see personally—that when it really mattered, Cleveland had the ability to move past what happened in 2010. It was to show that James too could come back and be happy raising his family at home and be embraced again by his home fans.

The display was funded by Gilbert but was the brainchild of Chris Grant, the Cavs' general manager, who had replaced Ferry in 2010. During James's second season in Miami, he took the surprising step of indicating publicly that he could see himself returning to play in Cleveland sometime in the future. In what would turn out to be a crucial moment, he opened the door and extended an olive branch on a snowy day in February 2012.

"I think it would be great, it would be fun to play in front of these fans again. I had a lot fun times in my seven years here. You can't predict the future, and hopefully I continue to stay healthy. I'm here as a Miami Heat player, and I'm happy where I am now, but I don't rule out returning in no sense. And if I decide to come back, hopefully the fans will accept me."

James said this after a Heat practice inside Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland on an off day. Within seconds, the words had reached Grant's ears ten miles away at the team's training facility. The concept of a James return had been whispered about, especially after he admitted he struggled with the transition to Miami. But here he was saying it, that he'd consider coming back. Though some dismissed it as James attempting to reduce the vitriol in Northeast Ohio, where he still lived in the offseason, some took it quite seriously. Especially Grant, who was perhaps the first, and for a while the only, Cavs employee who truly believed the franchise could get him back.

The following summer, a content James went even further. After winning his first championship in five games over the Oklahoma City Thunder and shedding the burden of never having won a ring, he was in London and on the verge of winning a second gold medal with the Olympic team. It was the most triumphant few months of his career. Getting wistful in an interview with the Associated Press, he again referred to missing Cleveland. "I wish I could have won one there. I could only imagine how the parade would have been down East 9th Street. Of course I thought about it because Cleveland helped me get to that point. The days that I spent there helped me get to the point where I was able to finally win one. It's just unfortunate I wasn't able to do it there."

This was seen as salt in the wounds to some in Cleveland, which lamented seeing James win elsewhere. And Cleveland indeed saw it. Ratings reports from the 2012 Finals showed the strongest local ratings outside the South Florida and Oklahoma City markets were in Cleveland. But others, including those daring to dream inside the Cavs offices, saw it as another gesture.

Gilbert responded with his own coded message. The next time James visited Cleveland for a game, in the 2012–13 season, Gilbert put out a message to fans on his social media: "Cleveland Cavaliers' young talent makes our future very bright. Clearly, LeBron's is as well. Time for everyone to focus on the road ahead."

Even with all the time that had passed, the polite tone from the man who essentially championed an anti-James movement was revealing. Gilbert had been fined $100,000 by NBA commissioner David Stern for sending out the letter in 2010, but had said in subsequent interviews he had no regrets. After James left, Gilbert hired Jones Day, one of the largest law firms in the nation, to investigate whether the Heat had been engaged in long-term recruiting of James, which would've been a violation of NBA rules. In 1995, the Heat essentially admitted they were guilty of this sort of tampering when negotiating to bring Pat Riley in to run the franchise while he was coaching the New York Knicks. The Heat ultimately agreed to send the Knicks $1 million and a first-round draft pick to settle the matter, which might've been the best deal Miami owner Micky Arison has ever made considering Riley's positive influence on the franchise.

Gilbert eventually decided not to file formal charges against the Heat. The burden of proof for such things is quite high and the gray area teams operate in is quite wide. Grant was also against it, wanting to move on and not extend the issue. It wasn't bringing James back at that point anyway. Plus the Cavs had held firm in working on a sign-and-trade deal with the Heat for James, getting two first-round picks and two second-round picks as a return for helping the Heat construct their superteam that included Chris Bosh and Dwyane Wade. Not only was that a haul greater than the Cavs probably would've gotten had they been able to prove a tampering charge, but the Cavs agreeing to trade James to Miami undercut any potential argument.

Gilbert had continued to stew, though, and in meetings he refused for several years to say James's name. So his sending out a message encouraging the fans to move on from the James hate was relevant. It also worked. For the first time that night, some fans at the arena applauded when James was introduced. It was far from the majority, but it sure was a departure from previous visits. During the game, a young fan named James Blair wandered onto the court in the middle of the game and approached James. He wore a T-shirt that read "We Miss You" on the front and "Come Back 2014" on the back. The 2014 reference was the first year James could be a free agent, more than a year away.

Security swarmed Blair, but before they could take him off the floor, James disarmed the situation and went over to embrace him. It was a symbolic moment—there was a thaw happening on both sides. Blair was banned by the Cavs from attending future games, but the moment quickly became famous. The Heat, who can be masters at public relations, soon invited Blair to a game in Miami and gave him Heat gear in an effort to swing the situation. But it only revealed that the Heat had started paying attention to the James-Cleveland developments.

The following summer, James made another significant move when he left his agent at Creative Artists Agency, Leon Rose, and hired his longtime friend Rich Paul as his basketball agent. CAA had played a significant role in helping James go to Miami two years earlier, as it also represented Wade and Bosh and negotiated all of their contracts in concert. From its inception as a Hollywood talent agency, CAA had always been about "packaging" clients on films and shows to maximize commissions. This was what they did with their three biggest basketball clients, wrapping them up in a bundle. Business was business, but this left some level of animosity between the Cavs and CAA.

Paul worked for CAA at the time as a junior agent, but he'd managed to stay on good terms with the Cavs. The first game the Cavs played in the post-James era, a home game in October 2010 against Boston, Paul attended in his role as a CAA agent. He lived in Cleveland and represented one of the Cavs' 2011 first-round draft picks, Tristan Thompson, which meant he was around the team frequently. It was Paul who called the team to inform them that James would be going to Miami, a move that was professional. Grant believed Paul operated in good faith and felt he could work with him.

When Paul established his new agency, Klutch Sports, he partnered with Mark Termini, an experienced Cleveland-based attorney and agent who'd dealt with the Cavs dating to the 1980s when he represented star Ron Harper. As it would turn out, James's new representatives had both history and respect from the team.

So as James headed into the final year of his Heat contract at the start of the 2013–14 season, Grant started to put plans into action. The Heat had now won back-to-back titles and James had won two Most Valuable Player awards and two Finals MVP awards. He looked not only to be thriving in Miami but entrenched there, the concept of his leaving seemed far-fetched. But Grant wasn't deterred, especially once the Heat released Mike Miller, who was one of James's closest friends, to reduce luxury tax payments the following season.

When James signed in Miami, CAA worked with Heat president Pat Riley to reduce the stars' salaries from the max level down to make room on the payroll for a couple of role players. One was Udonis Haslem, a CAA client, and the other was Miller. Ultimately James, Wade, and Bosh were in agreement to take less money, but James was not deeply involved in the process. The Heat were eventually able to work complex sign-and-trade deals to make all the math work.

As time passed, the way it unfolded ended up upsetting James and contributed to his decision to leave CAA. Shortly after doing so, he signed with William Morris Endeavor, CAA's Hollywood enemy, to represent him in film and television work. So he was also displeased when the Heat released Miller, a move that saved the team $17 million in luxury taxes, because he was still receiving a smaller paycheck to pay Miller's salary.

The Heat's roster was aging—they'd traded so many draft picks to acquire James and Bosh that they'd been unable to bring in many young players—and their heavy spending had made their luxury tax bills start to pile up and challenge their ability to keep the team together.