John Mitchell: Sorry Philly, but LeBron made the right choice

Just hours before he would agree to a four-year, $153.3 million deal with the Los Angeles Lakers, James, 33, gave a high-level contingency representing the 76ers, led by majority owner Josh Harris, their one-and-only opportunity to entice him to finish his career in Philadelphia.
The interesting caveat was that James didn’t attend the meeting, which immediately signaled that James, who was represented at the table by boyhood buddy Rich Paul, had likely already made up his mind to join the Lakers before the meeting took place and would not be in attendance to hear the Sixers gleefully offer him close to $40 million annually.
What’s important to note is that if the person who signs your check is willing to pay you that handsomely, rest assured that person envisions you making that money back for him tenfold. When James returned to Cleveland as a free agent in 2014 – a few years after residents there burned his jersey in the streets after he left for Miami via free agency in 2010 – estimates were that James’ mere presence would add $500 million to the Rust Belt city’s economy. Now that he’s gone, estimates are that the ‘LeBron Effect’ exceeded that.
This wasn’t lost on Harris. While he’d no doubt love to bring Philadelphia its first NBA championship since 1983 – it wasn’t hard to imagine teaming James with young talents Joel Embiid and Ben Simmons and possibly winning multiple titles – Harris is among the apex predators in the private equity investment game; he prioritizes bottom lines and wealth acquisition above all else.
But just as Harris is at the pinnacle of his profession, so too is James. While basketball is his love and his passion, the reality — and to his credit James fully recognizes this — is that it is now his vehicle to arrive at something even bigger.
There are those who can’t talk basketball without debating whether James is better than Michael Jordan, who took the Chicago Bulls to six championships in the 1990s. But those paying attention to James’ career arc recognize that he is above this barbershop conversation. After playing in eight consecutive NBA Finals, the four-time NBA MVP, three-time NBA Finals MVP, 14-time NBA All Star, and two-time Olympic gold medalist is comfortable with his impeccable legacy as a basketball player and is, rightly so, focused on what’s next.
Along the way to this point, James has never stopped reaching back to help pull the less fortunate along with him. He’s committed millions of dollars through his LeBron James Foundation to send the less fortunate to college. At the end of this month, his foundation is opening the “I Promise School” in Akron, Ohio, which will serve the most academically at-risk third- and fourth-graders in its first year with plans to expand.

He has impacted everything he’s touched. While realistically it won’t be as easy for him to win a fourth championship in Los Angeles with its average talent as it would have been in Philadelphia, that’s clearly not his sole guidepost at this point.
James wants to continue to grow his already prodigious wealth, and Los Angeles is obviously the place that he feels best suited to do so. He wants to venture into entertainment and expand his reach globally.
When a young African-American man like James starts to recognize that his only limits are self-imposed, regressive bigots such as conservative commentator Laura Ingraham, who earlier this year said James should “shut up and dribble” after he criticized President Donald Trump, worry that this could become contagious. After all, she makes her living exploiting the misery of the downtrodden. The last thing she needs is someone like James trying to expand their horizons beyond their current situations.
As Harris flew back to the East Coast on his private jet awaiting James’ formal response – which came hours later — James was simultaneously on his private jet headed to Italy with family and friends. Harris likely had seen the writing on the wall and had accepted that he wouldn’t be adding the sports world’s most powerful commodity to his billion-dollar portfolio.
But contrary to popular opinion, I don’t think Harris felt disrespected by James not showing up for their meeting. For the truly wealthy, it’s always business, never personal. Harris didn’t get to where he is by not maximizing his options. In James, he recognized a man doing the exact same thing.