A dozen days will pass before the Knicks go underground, before they leave LeBron James and his playoff-worthy peers with a wink and a tweak of a smoky Sinatra line — excuse us while we disappear.
Another grim Garden season will be complete, and then a city of 8 million point guards will fast-forward past the Finals and the draft and stop dead on the stroke of midnight, July 1, when Knicks president Donnie Walsh makes what could be the biggest phone call in the history of New York sports.
Actually, that first call will go to James’ agent, Leon Rose. But no rep is making this decision. Only an athlete with a “Chosen 1” tattoo racing across his comic-book back can decide what, exactly, he was chosen to do.
To lead the hometown Cavaliers to a title or three? To save the big-market Knicks from themselves?
James should pick Door No. 2. Win, lose or draw in the playoffs, he should honor the magnitude of his game, his persona and his appeal and do a summer deal with the Knicks that would reduce the sale of Babe Ruth to a story the size of a rosin bag.
No, this isn’t to say a start-to-finish career in Cleveland amounts to a bad option. The Cavaliers have been good to LeBron. They’ve built a consistent contender around him, and, of course, they’ll pay him the maximum wage to stay, some $30 million more than the Knicks are allowed to bid.
And let’s face it: If Cleveland was good enough for Jim Brown, it should be good enough for LeBron James.
Only it’s not quite good enough when measured against New York. This isn’t about the pizza, or the weather, or the nightlife, or whatever default positions writers often embrace when elevating one market at the expense of another.
This is about legacy, and one too important to be left in the hands of a New York columnist with an agenda.
Yes, I want to cover the world’s best player. Yes, I want the Garden to be the Garden again. Yes, I needed to run into Pat Riley at last month’s Big East tournament — the two of us talking about ’93 and ’94 and ’95 — to remember what the city was like when the Knicks were playing for a title, even if they didn’t win one.
So the pitch to LeBron belongs to more prominent voices, to past and present combatants in the New York arena, to five men from other corners of America and one plucked right off the asphalt of Rucker Park.
They all believe the Chosen One would benefit from choosing the Knicks. Only the former baller from Rucker Park, Donnie Walsh, was prohibited under David Stern’s law from saying so.
