The Saga Continues

I heard on ESPN this morning that apparently, last weekend LeBron James, Dwayne Wade and Chris Bosh all met up together "to discuss potential landing spots" for the three players.

If this is true, it is in my mind a huge story.

And more than that, when you add in the way LeBron has spoken about "the team he goes to next", the Tom Izzo stuff when LeBron would not even return one phone call to his potential coach in Cleveland, and now this meeting of three young stars in the NBA in Miami on the weekend before free agency begins, it is just looking more and more clear that LeBron is not pining away to stay in Cleveland. He is definitely looking around at his options, and he is definitely interested, so this is not going to be the easy road for the Cavaliers that many supposed pundits were predicting just a few weeks ago, that much is clear at this point.

Anyways, when I first heard this story, my immediate reaction was basically "No way all three of those guys could play on one NBA team!" When Chris Bosh himself was asked about that possibility last week on ESPN Radio, he described it as a fantasy, as "PlayStation type stuff" to use his words. But then I started thinking about it, and I'll be damned if it does not make a whole lot of sense to me.

From a talent perspective, it does seem like it could be a little bit crowded on the floor with Bron, D-Wade and Bosh all in there. But then you think about the other great teams of the last several years, and when it comes right down to it, they've all got two if not three bona fide all-star type of players on their team. Whether it's been Tim Duncan, Tony Parker and Nene, or Shaq, Kobe and Brian Shaw, or Kevin Garnett, Ray Allen and Paul Pierce, or Kobe, Gasol and Odom, there almost always seem to be three big players on each of the great teams of the past generation or so. The most recent Celtics team seems like the closest comparison, although even that threesome fails to capture the amount of talent and skill that would be the floor every night with LeBron, Wade and Bosh on the court, especially with Pat Riley at the helm. But despite what could sound like a lot of potential clogged lanes and ball hogging, the three players all do kinda play different positions, and in its own way I can almost see the three working together. D-Wade brings the ball down the court, LeBron steps out and takes that first pass, he dishes it off to Bosh on the inside. Bosh looks for the shot, finds D-Wade back out at the top of the key, who fakes the shot and instead throws the perfect alley-oop to LeBron who is streaking in from the opposite baseline from where he started the play. I really can see it, the more I think about it.

The other side of things is the finances, but strangely Miami is basically the one place where the money could actually work. Wade can be re-signed by the Heat and he can get a Larry Bird exception so his money does not fully count against the team's salary cap. The Heat could then sign Bosh and LeBron to multi-year contracts at or near the max, and the three players could unite in Miami -- one of the top few funnest cities in America by most counts -- and make a sick run for the NBA title. And don't even act like Pat Riley would not be out of retirement and coaching that team within how many seconds of the signings? 5? 1? 0.1? Lord knows that slick, pompous Riley must be fuming as he sees Phil Jackson -- who took the reins from Riley's Lakers team in the early '90s and has never looked back, winning 11 of 20 NBA titles while Riley has toiled in the Heat front office for the past several years -- winning year after year after year, all while assembling teams with clearly more talent than anybody else in the league.

Obviously nothing is set in stone yet by a long shot, and LeBron hasn't even begun fielding the offers he's going to be seeing in spades starting on Thursday at midnight. But the fact that LeBron has shown absolutely zero interest in helping his former team in Cleveland secure LeBron's services in the future, while at the same time making plans for a three-way powwow with two fellow NBA stars halfway across the country is to me very telling. LeBron isn't not interested in dealing with his free agency yet at all. He just doesn't want to deal with the Cavs.

I have a hunch that the next few weeks are going to change the NBA more than any few weeks in the sport's history.