after nine years of falling short of expectations, LeBron James has finally seemed to embrace the two dueling facets of his persona as the most gifted basketball player—maybe the most gifted athlete—alive, i.e., that he is never going to perform every night to the level that his myriad critics demand of him; and that regardless, he actually is the very best. Was there an instant of apprehension, a moment during unshaved self-imposed exile when he saw something and underwent a change?

I suspect there is an incomparable joy to be taken in doing something really, really well. I choose LeBron as my exemplar because the case is so starkly defined: when he is at his best, it’s almost impossible not to appreciate the grace and seeming rightness of his presence on the court. I know, as in 2012 anyone with an Internet connection knows, that he urgently wants to win—whether he should want this or should somehow have the Nietzchean Power-Will to transcend his need to want what an athlete of his caliber is expected and relentlessly incited to want and demand of himself is beyond the scope of these notes, since it is true that athletic contests are ultimately won and lost, regardless of how well they’re played—but he looks like he belongs on the court, as he definitely didn’t last year, when he seemed determined to prove something to some nebulous assemblage of onlookers who of course could never hope to grasp even remotely what it might be like to be possessed of an inborn (or at least extremely early-cultivated) ability to do things that few if any other people on the planet have ever been or will ever be able to do…

He’s come home, in other words: LeBron is back to doing what he does, patently playing the game as he’s always known it ought to be played, yes, but also playing it the way he’s comfortable with: greatly, generously, with true grace, without regrets.