Tonight at 9 E.S.T., basketball player corporate brand LeBron James will announce which NBA team he will sign with. It’s basically among the Cleveland Cavaliers (his current team), the Miami Heat (as things look now, the most likely candidate), the Chicago Bulls, and the New York Knicks, with dark-horses like the Los Angeles Clippers and Dallas Mavericks sort of thrown in the mix. All you really need to know is that everyone hates him now because this whole thing has been a sickeningly tacky display of raging egotism, and that if he does leave Cleveland—which, from a pure basketball perspective, was always the smart move—and does so now in this manner, you should probably actively root against whichever team he ends up on. In fact, you probably should anyway.
I can’t even muster the strength to say which team would be best from the perspective of the Jews (with apologies to Shaker Heights, it’s probably the Knicks, although the unsung Jews of Dallas and the Mavs’ Jewish owner, Mark Cuban, would certainly jump for joy if James picks them, which he won’t). For the best long discussion of everything at play, read Bill Simmons; for the best quick visceral take on how hateful James is right now, read Drew Magary; and for a new favorite basketball player, please consider the Oklahoma City Thunder’s Kevin Durant, a future superstar who quietly signed an extension with his team yesterday, because that is what classy athletes, as opposed to spoiled, choking-in-the-clutch cases of arrested development, do.
NOW. What of point guard Jordan Farmar? The NBA’s only current Jewish player who isn’t the Sacramento Kings’ Israeli forward Omri Casspi will almost certainly not return next season with the Los Angeles Lakers, the team on which he just won two consecutive championships: The Lakers did not tender him an offer, making him an unrestricted free agent, able to sign with the highest bidder. Farmar isn’t going to be starting anywhere any time soon, but you would think there would be an NBA team looking for a decent back-up PG with more playoff experience than all but a handful of the league’s starting guards.
If not, though, he and Jon Scheyer can always head for the Euroleague and make up an all-Jewish backcourt—and, frankly, a pretty competitive one at that.
Earlier: Undrafted, Scheyer Ponders Next Move
Marc Tracy is a staff writer at The New Republic, and was previously a staff writer at Tablet. He tweets @marcatracy.