LeBron would do well to remember that home is where the heart is

LeBron James should stay with the Cavaliers instead of coming here or going anywhere else.

Sometimes free-agent factors are bigger than fame and fortune, bigger than legacies and championships, bigger than sports and in this case basketball.

There's no "I" in "LeBron James" and shouldn't be now.

It pains to say that because the so-called King would look great in a Bulls uniform.

But the current situation isn't all that different from what went on here in the 1980s. Ironically, Bulls/White Sox chairman Jerry Reinsdorf was involved then and now.

Beyond that is the irony that Reinsdorf grew up in Brooklyn a Dodgers fan and suffered their flight to Los Angeles.

Yet after becoming a Chicagoan and ultimately owner of the Sox, Reinsdorf threatened to move them to St. Petersburg, Fla., in 1988.

The Sox never left because the Illinois General Assembly finally approved the new ballpark that Reinsdorf demanded.

I remember during those tense times suggesting to Reinsdorf that if he couldn't get a new Comiskey Park, he should sell the team and let someone else try.

Just don't dare move the Sox. Don't do that to Sox fans. Don't hurt however many or few of them there are.

Nobody but maybe Reinsdorf and his inner circle know for sure whether he would have had the audacity to do to the South Side what Dodgers owner Walter O'Malley did to Brooklyn.

Now Reinsdorf is trying to recruit LeBron James away from the Cavaliers, from Cleveland and from his hometown of nearby Akron.

Reinsdorf has no choice. It's business. If James decides to leave it might as well be to Chicago rather than New York, Miami or anywhere else.

The choice is King James', King James' only, and he should stay where he has been all his life.

Make no mistake about it, this is more than a franchise player. James is a franchise, if not to the Cavaliers or Cleveland certainly to Akron.

"Obviously devastating," Cleveland radio personality Aaron Goldhammer said Monday on ESPN's "Outside the Lines" of the impact on northeast Ohio if James left.

Economists are calculating a community's financial windfall of getting James or downfall of losing him, but that's only money?

Heartstrings are more important than purse strings. What James means emotionally to folks there is more important than what he means economically.

I don't understand how James could deprive Cleveland/Akron of his presence any more than I understood how Reinsdorf could deprive the Chicago area of the Sox.

Maybe Reinsdorf wouldn't have left, couldn't have left, because his family's deep roots here would have been awkward to maintain.

Now James has a similar consideration. He is Akron, Akron is he, and that bond has to be weighed against the myriad benefits of starting over elsewhere.

Young adults leave their hometown all the time for career purposes, but few are as important to a community as James is to Akron and the entire region.

How could James leave and live the rest of his life knowing what he did to his neighbors?

Stay home, King, and, whether or not you win championships, enjoy being worshipped by the community.

mimrem@dailyherald.com