Jim Ingraham: Yes, LeBron left Cavs twice, but his legacy is here to stay

What if LeBron had never left the Cavs? Instead of playing "only" the 11 years he did play with Cleveland, what if he had played all 22 years (and counting) of his career with the Cavs? What would that have looked like for them, and him? To refresh your memory, it went like this: He left Cleveland after his first seven seasons in the league, then returned to Cleveland after four years in Miami, then left Cleveland again after four years, this time for the Lakers, with whom he is now playing his seventh season. LeBron was 19 years old when the Cavs selected him with the first pick in the 2003 draft. In 2003, Darius Garland was 3 years old. On December 30, LeBron will turn 40. The Cavs-Lakers game Wednesday was the 1,497th of LeBron's NBA career. Only five players have played more NBA games than LeBron: Robert Parish (1,611), Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (1,560), Vince Carter (1,541), Dirk Nowitzki (1,522) and John Stockton (1,504). Counting Wednesday's game, LeBron is 115 games away from passing Parish for the most games played in NBA history. Parish played 14 seasons with Boston, four with Golden State, two with Charlotte and one with Chicago. LeBron played 11 seasons with the Cavs, seven with the Lakers and four with Miami. Stockton, who played the fifth-most games in NBA history, played all those games — 19 seasons — with the same team, the Utah Jazz. Abdul-Jabbar played with just two teams: 14 seasons with the Lakers and six with Milwaukee. Dirk Nowitzki played all his games with the Dallas Mavericks. At the other end of the scale is Vince Carter, who ranks third all time in games played. Carter played seven years with Toronto, five years with New Jersey, three years with Dallas, three years with Memphis, two years with Atlanta, one year with Sacramento and one year with Phoenix. Translation: Carter led the league in traveling. LeBron came into the league at a time in which player movement in the NBA was in its infancy. Not many players moved from team to team. However, it didn't take long for the players to start forming their own super teams by becoming free agents and then signing together, as a group package, with their preferred teams. LeBron's controversial exit from Cleveland was on the cutting edge of that trend, when he and Toronto's Chris Bosh became free agents and simultaneously signed with Miami, joining their buddy Dwayne Wade to create the first super team that, in short order, won back-to-back NBA titles in 2011-12 and 2012-13. That was the start of a gravy-train, musical rosters era that the Cavs quickly cashed in on, after LeBron stunned everyone by not only returning to Cleveland as the competitive magnet, but orchestrating, enticing and cajoling other roster moves, trades and free agent signings — Kevin Love, Richard Jefferson, J.R. Smith, Iman Shumpert, Channing Frye, etc. — that quickly rocketed the Cavs into an elite team with staying power. The result was the greatest four-season run in Cavs history, in which they reached the NBA Finals in four consecutive seasons — all against the Golden State Steph Currys — and, in that glorious 2015-16 season, became the first and still the only team in history to win the NBA title after being down three games to one in the Finals. Could the Cavs have won more than that one NBA title if LeBron had never left? It's certainly possible, but unknowable. What mattered was that LeBron, after breaking Cleveland's heart by abandoning the franchise in order to build a super team in Miami that won the NBA title in two of the four years LeBron was a Heat, he returned to the Cavs and authored a four-year run of excellence, climaxed by that spectacular parade in 2016. And then LeBron left again. The famous quote was by the esteemed author John Updike, who in his essay recounting how Ted Williams, following his last game at Fenway Park, refused to come out of the dugout and acknowledge his cheering fans. "Gods," wrote Updike, "do not answer letters." LeBron did. It is one of the lasting traits that Cleveland will most remember about him. He never got into trouble off the court. He was a model athlete, an active citizen, a prodigious winner and a spectacular example on how professional athletes should conduct themselves. Cleveland had LeBron twice, and lost him twice. In between he delivered the only world championship produced by the city's sports teams in the last 60 years. On Cleveland's sports Mt. Rushmore there is Bob Feller, Jim Brown, Otto Graham and LeBron James. What if LeBron had never left the Cavs? The cheering never would have stopped. Neither would the winning. Imagine, for example, the current Cavs — plus LeBron James. We can dream, can't we? LeBron left twice, but he also came back once. That mattered a lot. It still does. Contact Jim Ingraham at jingraham4@gmail.com. Follow him @Jim_Ingraham on X.