MIAMI _ And now you let it go, because you have to let it go, as startling as it was to leave a team after four consecutive trips to the NBA Finals.
LeBron James made the right decision.
Because of what Kyrie Irving has become, now in the prime of his career. Because of how Kevin Love has found his place of superior support, just as another power forward alongside had. Because Dan Gilbert has been cornered into spending into a luxury-tax stratosphere previously reserved only for the irrationality of a Russian oligarch.
It has been four years since LeBron James set up the Miami Heat for a fall as he set up his future with the Cleveland Cavaliers. And now, with Josh McRoberts opting into the final $6 million of that hastily constructed Heat contract, the two sides of that July 2014 equation have never been starker.
It was earlier this year, amid James' dealing with the drudgery of another regular season, when Heat President Pat Riley said in a Yahoo interview, "When LeBron left, that was the most shocking thing to me _ not to say he was right or wrong _ and the most shocking thing to the franchise."
There have yet to be multiple titles in this return to Cleveland as there were with the two with the Heat. But that could change in coming weeks, bolstered yet again this season, this time with Kyle Korver and Deron Williams (after previous upgrade bids with since-sidelined Chris Andersen and Andrew Bogut).
Getting past the Chris Bosh blood clots that had yet to surface upon LeBron's departure, and even accepting that Wade would have aged more gracefully with James alongside these past three seasons, this is a case of a player setting himself up to endure at the top.
It was in Wright Thompson's eloquently penned ESPN profile that Riley said this past season of James' departure. "He went home because he had to go home. It was time. It was really time for him to go home, in his prime. If he's ever gonna do anything in Akron again, this was the time to do it. Otherwise, he'd have had a scarlet letter on his back the rest of his whole life."
That, however, was merely the cover for stepping away from what has remained the constant, these trips to the NBA Finals.
Just as James scans the court after a defensive rebound, picking his way past defenders, propelling toward the rim at precisely the right moment, so, too, was the focus on the court when Miami lost and Cleveland won when the clock was ticking in a different way in July 2014.
It was always a basketball decision.
The rarest of basketball decisions, of not riding with Pat Riley.
Based on the landscape of the Eastern Conference, there most likely would have been additional trips to the NBA Finals with the Heat, as well.
But the move to Cleveland never was about the following two or three seasons. It was about an end game.
In the end, the Cavaliers already are again the Eastern Conference favorites for next season.
And even as the Boston Celtics reload with the expected likes of Markelle Fultz and another 2018 lottery pick, courtesy of the Brooklyn Nets and Mikhail Prokhorov largesse, and as the Philadelphia 76ers attempt to cash in on The Process, it is not a stretch to forecast LeBron's Cavaliers as the 2018-19 favorites, either.
That's what July 2014 was all about. This moment. And moments that can follow, because even a healthy Bosh would have been an older Bosh. And even as arguably the best running mate of all, Wade was still running out of steam.
"I was very angry when LeBron left," Riley said in the ESPN piece. "It was personal for me. It just was."
And yet it ultimately was and is about exactly what Riley has been about these past five decades _ enduring success.
