Summarize this content to 100 words: NEW YORK — LeBron James was sitting at his Madison Square Garden locker the way one of Sunday night’s courtside fans, Patrick Ewing, always sat at his — with his old man’s knees buried under big wraps and his achy feet planted in a bucket of ice.James was wearing a black Lakers shirt and eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. His wife, Savannah, was waiting patiently in the hallway; she was the first of the Lakers’ family members and friends to arrive outside the locker room after the Knicks beat her husband’s team, 112-100.If this had the feel of a this-is-your-life stop for the 41-year-old James, well, No. 23 was just named to his 22nd straight All-Star Game and the Garden has always been his favorite gym. By a lot.Someone asked LeBron what this building meant to him, and he barely waited for the reporter to finish before blurting, “Everything.” He didn’t need to say another word.But the four-time NBA champion did go on to say the same things he’s said about the Garden for more than two decades, calling it “the Mecca of basketball” and an electric place where so many sports and entertainment icons had performed at the top of their games.“I hope I have a little small snippet of somebody that came through here and was able to make a little small dent from a visitor’s perspective,” LeBron said.A little small snippet. Yeah, just like Joe Frazier left a little small snippet here 55 years ago when he beat Muhammad Ali in “The Fight of the Century.”LeBron delivered an impressive night of basketball in defeat, scoring 22 points on 9-of-15 shooting and finishing with 6 assists, 5 rebounds, 1 steal, and only 1 turnover. But truth is, he is stuck on a Lakers team that has very little chance of winning the Western Conference side of the NBA playoff draw, and he will be a free agent after the season ends.Of course, James might choose retirement over a 24th year in the league. A quick review of his resume suggests this is a man with no more mountains to climb and no more butts to kick. You wonder what could possibly motivate a billionaire who grew up poor to continue torturing his body so he can achieve at the highest level.Until you remember something he once said to a current Los Angeles Clippers executive. Lee Jenkins, the team’s vice president of basketball affairs, who was writing for Sports Illustrated 10 summers ago when LeBron told him this:“My motivation is this ghost I’m chasing. The ghost played in Chicago.”That ghost was 6-0 in the NBA Finals and 6-0 in his quest to win the Finals MVP award. That’s why Michael Jordan is still the last man standing between James and the one thing he wants more than anything else.The one thing the New York Knicks, of all teams, are best equipped to give him.My colleague at The Athletic, Jason Lloyd, made a compelling case the other day for James to close out his career by joining his hometown team, the Cavaliers, for a third time. Lloyd wrote a great piece to capture an emotional night for the Akron Hammer, who was moved to tears during a video tribute.The Cavs make a lot of sense for James, no question. But he already ended a biblical championship drought in Cleveland, and if the ultimate target is still Jordan, then New York makes just a little small snippet of extra sense.This is about logic. The 2010 Summer of LeBron? That was about emotion, at least on the New York side of the pursuit. The Knicks were pure garbage back then, on and off the floor. Prominent public figures in the big city made their appeal — Come save us … please! — but LeBron wasn’t about to gamble his championship aspirations on a James Dolan operation that was consistently losing at least 50 games a year.That was then.And this is now.The Knicks have won at least one playoff series in each of the last three seasons, and they eliminated the defending champion Celtics in Round 2 last year. They coulda, woulda, shoulda beaten the Pacers in Round 3. In other words, they no longer need to be saved. They need simply to be taught how to get from the conference finals to the Finals, and then from the Finals to the trophy presentation.LeBron James, a 10-time conference champ, can do that in his sleep in the East, which is a virtual walk in Central Park when compared to the loaded West.The man has a lot of good options, including chasing a title and playing golf with Steph Curry at Golden State. James could always sign up for another year with the Lakers, but there are visible signs of mutual fatigue there. Just as his friend Tom Brady was “Belichick’d out” near the end in New England, James looks “Buss’d out” (as in Jeanie Buss) in Los Angeles.And again, the Western Conference in the spring of 2027 will be no place for a 42-year-old man to chase a fifth ring.In the East in ’27, assuming the Knicks don’t win it all this season, New York will be looking at 53 years without a championship. James can choose to attack that monumental challenge as his final NBA act. Remember, his agent Rich Paul released that summer statement saying his client wants to evaluate what’s best for him at this stage of his career and “wants to make every season he has left count.”James should really start thinking about New York as the best way to do that. The Knicks are run by his former agent, team president Leon Rose, and his former adviser, executive VP William Wesley, and they are coached by his former Cavaliers coach, Mike Brown. These men know what makes LeBron tick, and hey, the Garden isn’t going anywhere.Dave Checketts, former Garden and Knicks president, once tried and failed to lure Michael Jordan to New York in 1996. Now part of a private equity partnership with the Cynosure Group, Checketts recalled that he tried to sell Jordan on winning a title with Ewing “in the biggest room in the world, which is what I call the Garden, and Jordan respectfully said no.“Everything that you do in New York gets magnified beyond all belief. Like with Michael back then, I think it’s a place that can fully complete LeBron’s career now, especially if he can put this Knicks group over the top. That would be the pinnacle for him. I don’t know if winning his fifth title with the Knicks makes LeBron better than Michael, but it becomes a really close call.”Actually, winning a fifth title with a fourth different franchise would offset LeBron’s six defeats in the Finals, suffered almost exclusively with inferior teams. And if that fourth franchise happened to be the team that Jordan refused to join, the Knicks, there would be no more challenges to conquer.And no more ghosts to chase. LeBron James would retire as the GOAT.
Why LeBron James should start thinking about joining next year’s Knicks
