You Shouldn’t Have To Go Home Again

Whenever I hear it suggested that LeBron will stay in Cleveland because of Akron, or that Wade’s Bulls-bound as a matter of birthplace, or Vince Carter’s really dialed in now that he’s back in central Florida, I get angry. Not because I don’t appreciate the deep relationship people have with where they came from—especially when, as in the case of LeBron, it’s an oft-aligned, sports-suffering region that needs a savior—but because there’s something vaguely patronizing in the logic.↵
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↵No matter how big players get, they can’t escape where they came from. Or, if you want it sugar-coated, athletes are so sentimental, they can’t resist the pull of friends and family—never mind that almost every study done by human hands proves that being around too much friend and family will prove to be a distraction. I’m not saying that the beach and sexy ladies should be less of a drain, but they are.↵
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↵I’m not against players who want to stay close to a home base they’ve established as adults. To be fair, Carter did always want to be close to his daughter; then again, neither Andre Miller nor Baron Davis did so well in their return to LA. It’s just strange to me that, when many young men see basketball as a way to escape, get rich and see the world, we assume they want to head right back to where they came from. There are shades of the territorial draft, even assumed provincialism. What’s more, it places an outlandish burden on them that only LeBron, possibly the greatest ever (yeah, I said it), can even come close to supporting.↵
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So next time you’re trying to predict the free-agency currents or the trades in the air, you’d do well to ignore players’ place of birth. Not because roots don’t matter or these athletes have no sense of obligation to their cities. But when it comes to choosing a destination, there’s no reason that your formative years can short-circuit their professional instincts. Too many people tend to see comforts of a life that they may have largely left behind, and maybe even old issues and new jealousy that come only from being around the same people for too long. Does this sound like a dream destination?↵
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↵The lone exception is LeBron, who if you didn’t notice, has now officially sublimated Cleveland into his own personal brand. And he had that script fall into his lap.
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