by David Zizmor

LeBron James return to the Cleveland Cavaliers will also be a homecoming as he’s from Akron Ohio. LeBron played seven seasons with the Cavs. The main reason why LeBron signed with the Cavs is he saw the writing on the wall, the Miami roster based in the finals in San Antonio LeBron saw they were going to have a tough time being competitive even in the Eastern Conference given the players that they have the Heat went out and picked a couple of players in case LeBron wouldn’t come back.

A mural in Miami that depicts the entire Heat team was defaced, just LeBron’s face only and talk shows in Miami were the abuzz about how fans would respond to LeBron leaving Miami for Cleveland. It’s almost like the time when he left Cleveland the first time, the fans feel like they were stabbed in the heart.

The Heat’s Dwayne Wade is a shadow of his former self, four years ago LeBron signed with the Heat and Wade was still a superstar and a starting player in the All-Star game and people wondered if Wade and LeBron could co-exist and frankly in the first month or two that was the big problem.

Wade had trouble giving up the ball conceding that LeBron was the better player and it made for an adjustment in the first couple months in November last season in Miami. Eventually that problem went away and the Heat won more consecutive championship series. In this last one you kind of saw Wade was on the downside of his career. If you look at it Wade sat out a lot of games and when he sat it allowed him to rest and be fresh in the playoffs.

Wade’s defense was a liability in the finals and his defense was awful and he wasn’t helping much on the offense side of the game. If LeBron moved back to Miami Wade was going to stay there and Wade still might. The simple fact that Wade is not a superstar and you can’t consider him an NBA top ten player. At Miami they have multiple top players and Wade doesn’t fit the bill anymore.

The Cleveland roster has a lot of young players on it who are on the upswing and they aren’t so expensive and they can add pieces to help them be title contenders. They have, Tristan Thompson, Anderson Varejao, Dion Waiters, Andrew Wiggins who was taken in the draft and Anthony Bennett. There is a lot of talent on the Cavs that can help Cleveland become top dog in the Eastern Conference.

Now the question is would they become a good enough team to beat San Antonio? Who knows at this point. When LeBron was there in his first run with the Cavs 2003-04 (rookie year) he help take them to the NBA Finals and they lost and that roster was worse than the one he’s on now.

David Zizmor covers the NBA for http://www.sportsradioservice.com