Step Down, King James

LeBron James should retire. Immediately.

Before my friends in the 216, 440, and 330 disown me (those would be the area codes for Cleveland, its suburbs, and Akron, respectively, for those of you who aren't familiar with our country's beautiful North Coast), let me first point out how much it pained me to come to that conclusion. I'm from Cleveland. My softball jersey is No. 19, the same digits I sported on my 1988 Bernie Kosar Halloween costume. I'm very touchy about discussing the Cuyahoga River catching on fire. And like my fellow Northeast Ohioans, I pronounce my short-o sounds through my nostrils, so I would tell you that at Christmas I drink egg naaahg and the once and future king of the NBA that you call King James, we call LeBraahn. As much as anybody, I have placed a messianic level of faith in a 22-year-old sports savior.

And that, sadly, is exactly why he needs to get out.

We often throw out the abbreviation "phenom" to describe LeBron. After all, he took the NBA, a man's league, by storm at the wise, old age of 18. He won the All-Star Game MVP less than two months after he turned 21. His combination of skill and maturity, which fly directly against his youth, truly are the phenomenon that we suggest.

However, there is also a LeBron James Phenomenon. This is a far darker fluke of reality. No player has come into the league with such expectations. No player has heard, and answered, his critics at such an early point in his career. Quite simply, no player has been charged with satisfying a league, a city, media, and fans with so much invested in him at such an early point.

Nearly four years ago, Jack McCallum wrote a cover story for Sports Illustrated precociously titled "The Importance of Being LeBron." A few angles in the story haven't exactly held up (including a ridiculous quote from LeBron about acquiescing to Ricky Davis as the leader of the Cavs), but many of McCallum's points remain relevant. More people have a stake invested in LeBron than any other star in American sports history.

The League

The whispers of the NBA's imminent death are hardly new. TV ratings are in the toilet, they say. Corporate sponsors don't want to roll the dice and associate with these players that turn off mainstream America, they say. And then this league, suffocated by the ghost of one No. 23, finds this diamond of youth, a new No. 23, who rises from the ashes.

Between Jordan's last shot in Salt Lake City in June 1998 (and the push-off on Bryon Russell that helped, and no, that whole Washington thing never happened) and LeBron's debut in late 2003, the NBA searched near and far for a partner to marry its product to. There was an ill-fated relationship with Allen Iverson. Vince Carter soared through the air, but eventually flew far too close to the sun on wings (and knees) made of wax and easily-damaged cartilage. And Shaq, well, continued to be Shaq, but that doesn't sell tickets and sneakers, does it?

The league needed something new, something fresh. And then came this great young hope. With all of the eyes of the world on him, LeBron smoothly dropped 25 points, 9 assists, 6 boards, and 4 steals in Sacramento on his career's opening night. And just like that, a star was born.

Fast-forward to today. D-Wade has a championship, but most people acknowledge with a wink and a nod that Shaq may have had something to do with that. Kobe has shined brighter on single nights, such as his 81-pointer, but has struggled to reach any status beyond side-show act. And LeBron's supposed peer in the class of 2003, Carmelo Anthony, has meandered though a maddeningly above-average career marked more by sucker punches and gang-propaganda videos than basketball excellence. For better or worse, this is LeBron's league.

The City

In a small side street off of Ontario Avenue, the giant screen seared the images into the retinas of thousands of fans, but they didn't seem to mind. Cavs fans, all dressed in LeBron jerseys and other wine-and-gold paraphernalia that devoured their disposable income, celebrated the Game 6 win over Detroit in the Eastern Conference finals. But when the rabid suburban fans finally exited the party scene, the real Cleveland emerged. Only a dozen or so blocks away from the glittering palace of white-collar entertainment known as "The Q," the less glamorous side of Cleveland won't be hopping into sedans and SUVs and leaving the area on I-77 or I-90. Here, in places like East 13th and Chester Avenue, is where Clevelanders who actually have "Cleveland" in their return addresses survive.

Much of Cleveland lies in economic ruin, a glass desert left in the fallout of a breaking, if not broken, rust-belt economy. For the true residents of Cleveland, it's nights like June 2nd that serve as a welcome respite from daily life. True, they might not have been able to scrape together $80 bucks to scale the reaches of Quicken Loans Arena's upper bowl (face value: $10). But they congregated around TVs in apartments and bars, knowing that something special was about to happen. And as roars of jubilation oozed out of every door and window into otherwise barren streets, these people found the kind of panacea that Karl Marx said came through religion. But Mr. Marx wasn't around for the night LeBron dropped 48 on the Pistons. No, these Clevelanders inject, ingest, and inhale their opiate in the form of a basketball superstar coming of age.

The Media

The Greatest. The Most Overhyped. The Chosen One. By his own choice, LeBron sits directly under the hottest light that has ever burned down on an American athlete.

Before Michael Jordan was a silhouette on a $200 pair of sneakers, he was the lanky, budding star for the Bulls in the '80s. Sure, Jordan ascended to his throne and only relinquished it once to go to the bathroom (or was that to play baseball for the Birmingham Barons) once he announced himself with a championship in 1991. But don't forget about the other Jordan.

For LeBron, there never has been a period for blooming. At least in terms of hype, he emerged in full blossom, petals-and-all, the instant he entered the NBA. The kid gloves were mostly off because, after all, even a kid couldn't deserve this kind of adulation. And ever since that day, you would think LeBron had wrapped himself in Republican Red or Democrat Blue given the way admirers and haters have taken their angles.

While the LeBron Phenomenon certainly has a polarizing effect, James has also been thrust into an environment that makes such hysteria the norm. A writer who merely says LeBron is a rapidly developing young star with an unthinkably broad base of skills won't get his face on TV. No, today it is far more important to capture the essence of a complex human being in one fell swoop, both smugly glorious in its comprehensiveness and self-congratulatingly simple (not to mention media-friendly) in its brevity. After all, how else will you make your point before Jay Mariotti talks over you?

So as this new star rises, it's simultaneously maddening, disappointing, and, most of all, predictable that the media has already sunk its fangs into LeBron and injected its digestive venom. And why would we be surprised; isn't that what our society has come to do best? The sports media has fallen into the lazy habit of building stars based on hype, feigning frustration when they decide the hype is unwarranted, and finally bringing out the wrecking ball to take down their unworthy idol. After all, what's the point of being a mediocre sportswriter if you don't get to take shots at the genetically elite from your self-constructed perch of intellectual supremacy?

The Fans

We've already met the fourth planet that Atlas James has been asked to carry on his shoulders. These are the wine-and-gold clad faithful who are at the base of the economic LeBron Pyramid. They (make that "We") are the minions who buy the jerseys, shoes, and tickets that make LeBron, Inc. a successful venture. But don't pity them (us). The relationship between Cleveland fans and LeBron is mutually parasitic. For every gushing claim by both camps about the hometown hero's torrid love affair with Northeast Ohio, there lies one unspoken reality. More than the fans of any city in the country, Cleveland fans are slaves to past failure. And with their latest and best hope in the fold, it's quite clear that Cleveland fans will consider a LeBron era without a championship the latest in a series of sports failures.

The problem for both LeBron and his fans is that they both know he is special. He's not, as Sam Smith moronically said a few weeks ago on Tony Kornheiser's radio show, closer to Vince Carter than he is to Jordan. Sure, we'd all like to see explosions of greatness like Game 5 in Detroit a little more often, but at this point the question is no longer if he can back up the hype, it's how often.

And this is where Cleveland fans can't help but retrace the failures of their sports past. Fans in L.A., Miami, Portland, and, heck, even Boston, would be excitedly waiting for the continued ascension of the King. But not here. Not in a city that has these traumatic milestones of misery. Not as the 10-year anniversary of Jose Mesa approaches this October. Not when the ghosts (yeah, I know they're still alive) of Art Modell and John Elway haunt all things brown and orange. Not when the very organization LeBron is rallying was stunted into irrelevance by a famous shot from another No. 23 (we call it "The Shot"). Not here.

And hanging over all of this is the potential that LeBron could leave for flashier pastures. Why would the league's brightest star toil in the commercially barren wasteland of Cleveland? And while LeBron has never been publicly caught philandering with the Knicks or Lakers, he hasn't exactly embraced his King-for-life potential in Cleveland. The jubilation over his re-signing last year was quickly tempered by the revelation that LeBron only re-upped for three years instead of the full five he could have. So Clevelanders, already showing fifth-latte level jitters after four decades of sports pain, can already feel the impending doom. LeBron is only 22 and should, by any reasonable measure, have at least a dozen more seasons to try to win a title. But how many of those will play out on the banks of Lake Erie?

So why, with all these people, all this hope invested, should LeBron walk away from it all? Precisely because of them. Having fully announced his talents to the basketball nation this spring, LeBron is now on notice. We all have something at stake in him. For the fans, it's emotional. For most everyone else, it's money. But the consequences are clear: if LeBron doesn't accomplish the world — which is exactly what his expectations are — the spiteful acid pool of disappointment will eat him alive. David Stern, civically hopeful Clevelanders, sportswriters, marketing execs, and Cavs fans will storm the gates of LeBron's iconic fortress, pitchforks and torches in hand.

And for what? LeBron has all the money he could need. Sure, the money itself is nothing more than a measuring stick of business success for LeBron, just as the points in his box scores are only a way for us mere hardwood mortals to comprehend his basketball genius. But James has already realized levels of success from his talent that defy the demographic odds. For a kid from Akron raised by a single mother, wealth and fame are as likely as divining the winning numbers for the Mega-Millions lottery. The bottom line is the next five to 10 years for LeBron will be as thankless and potentially pulverizing a period as any faced by any superstar of the past. Walking on water won't be enough; we'll need to see him fashion that water into merlot before we're impressed.

But LeBron has vanquished the impossible before. He did it on opening night in Sacramento with flashbulbs popping and critics scowling. He did it in that All-Star Game, when many stars would have mentally checked out in the third quarter. And most recently, he did it on that night in the Palace of Auburn Hills, single-handedly disemboweling the Pistons five-at-a-time with his own playoff life and stardom in the balance. These mountains, impossible to ascend in even the most wildly optimistic of imaginations, have been merely hurdles to line up and clear so far for LeBron.

And that is why now, at this point in his career, LeBron has nothing more to gain. To bridge the distance between here and what everyone needs him to achieve is unfathomable. He'll take on the challenge because, honestly, what else is there for a superstar in full bloom to do? But 20 years from now, when we've all had our turn to vent about how our investment in LeBron just hasn't panned out to the ridiculous heights we expected, we should remember this point on the LeBron timeline. When the career of a bona fide sports savior hangs prematurely lifeless on a cross, tortured and ravaged by inconceivably unrealistic expectations, we will have nobody to blame but ourselves.