Because I’ve been obsessed with James for several years, and for those several years I’ve scrutinized my own obsession. I’m five-foot-six in flattering footwear; I was a terrible point guard; I’m terrified of people, crave spurious affirmation only to feel the terror of personal lack when it’s unexpectedly granted me; I’m not a champion or King, in other words—for thirty years I’ve lost at just about everything I’ve tried to do: I really ought to hate a person like LeBron.

I should have spent the past half-decade enjoying his failure to become what all of his detractors demanded that he be. I should have rooted for the Pacers or the Celtics to humiliate him this postseason, relished once again his falling-short, rejoiced in the confirmation that in this world there are no Kings. . . .

But I watched every single game the Heat played this season, and last. At work, in my ten open minutes between teaching classes in extremely elementary English, I’d check live-update “gamecasts,” willing each statline to reflect some sort of conquest or success. . . . Now, as I race against a graciously extended deadline to throw at least a little order into these distracted notes, I sort of have to ask myself: Why have I cared?

Those of us who actively track sporting news after we’ve passed the point at which we can actually play the games, must do so for some reason other than nostalgia. In the histrionic do-or-die of high-stakes big-money athletic competition, many of us see something of the much less dramaturgical experience of our own day-to-day, and that a win for my team this night manifests as the possibility that I might taste victory tomorrow; a loss reminds me of the all-too-human truth that one day, any day, maybe tomorrow, I, too, will fall. . . . And what I’ve seen in LeBron James’ struggle over the past several years to be the player he was clearly born to be is the (remote of course, as possibilities most always are) alternative of a third way.

LeBron is basically the same LeBron he was a year ago, in terms of what he’s capable of doing on the floor. Despite the accolades after victories and the equally absurd denunciations post-defeat, what’s changed this year for LeBron James is, in my view, not what he’s done, but how he’s decided to do whatever he can: