On July 8th, 12 years ago, LeBron James announced his departure from his hometown of Cleveland live on ESPN. The reactions to his announcement were anything but positive – and the creation of the show was different than expected.
“This fall, it’s very tough, this fall I’m going to take my talent to South Beach and join the Miami Heat. I have the feeling that I have the best chance of winning titles there. I feel like I can keep up down there.”
While the show garnered insanely high ratings, averaging 9.948 million viewers in the United States and 13.1 million viewers at the time of James’ announcement, LeBron has faced criticism for the long wait before making his actual decision, as well as for the show itself.
The broadcast also resulted in Cleveland fans burning their jerseys and other LeBron James-related items, and in the Cavaliers’ owner Dan Gilbert writing a now-famous letter that was negative about James.
Turns out, contrary to popular belief, the idea of livestreaming James’ decision wasn’t initiated by LeBron or his team of Rich Paul, Leon Rose and Maverick Carter, but came from a regular fan.
It was a basketball fan – Drew from Columbus, Ohio – who suggested former ESPN contributor Bill Simmons for one of his Mailbag columns in November 2009. Simmons was delighted. He emailed network executives for months, and also raised the idea with William “World Wide Wes” Wesley, Carter and Rose during the 2010 All-Star Games in Dallas. Simmons urged her to produce an announcement program called “LeBron’s Decision.”
The idea came up during Game 2 of the 2010 NBA Finals in Los Angeles when Gray Carter apparently told James that James should announce his decision live on television. Carter convinced James of the concept, and entertainment and media agent Ari Emanuel proposed it to former ESPN President John Skipper, who was ESPN’s head of programming at the time.
Originally posted by OpenCourt Basketball, The True Story Behind The Night That Changed Everything For LeBron James.
