After all LeBron James has done to Cleveland, and after all Cleveland has done to him, hope still lives for a reunion -- at least according to James.
"If there was an opportunity for me to return," James says in the September issue of GQ magazine, "and those fans welcome me back, that'd be a great story."
A great story, undoubtedly, but one that will likely remain fictional. Cleveland, after all, is still licking its wounds after James slowly peeled off the Band-Aid in the one-hour "Decision" and announced his defection to the Miami Heat. And it remains the city where fans are doing one of two things to his jersey: burning it or selling it as toilet paper.
So it's safe to say Cleveland fans aren't thinking about a reunion. What they are pondering -- still -- is how James could be so cold, how he could leave them and remain so stoic and unaffected.
Turns out, the answer is pretty simple: James never liked the city.
"Clevelanders, because they were the bigger-city kids when we were growing up, looked down on us," James says about Cleveland and his hometown, nearby Akron. "So we didn't actually like Cleveland. We hated Cleveland growing up. There's a lot of people in Cleveland we still hate to this day."
The feeling is now mutual.
J.R. Moehringer, who wrote the GQ piece and chronicled James' journey during and after the infamous "Decision," spoke with ESPN, sharing thoughts on James' move to Miami, his aversion to being alone and the trick to knowing when he's lying. Coincidentally, Steve Aschburner of NBA.com compares James to disgraced President Richard Nixon.
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