He left Orlando as a free agent and the Lakers were shyt at that point there was no ring chasing there
I fukks with Bron but the decision and leaving to play with his boys in Miami did it for me. He's to me the face of an era where it doesn't feel like most of these dudes compete anymore. I always say it but Jordan never left to go form up 2 other prime great players in the East to take down Detroit
nikkas always use that front office excuse as well knowing that the type of help he needed for those Cavs teams then wasn't/isn't always out there to bring in.
He's a great player and entertaining as hell sometimes but nah the Heatles era/Front running shyt definitely didn't help his image one bit with the die hard nba fans.
Long post incoming
Mike signed an 8 year extension in 1987 I think it was. He was stuck in Chicago good or bad, but make no doubt about it that if the Bulls didn't surround him with a championship quality supporting cast, and two of his best friends also were on the market and a team could make it work, he would have left too. Are we really gonna hate on a guy for leaving a trash organization because of their ineptitude? "The type of help they need to add isn't available, so let's absolve a terrible team of any accountability or responsibility to do their job and put it all on him. He should stay because Jordan and bird and magic didn't leave world class organizations." That whole narrative gets pushed decades later as a means of propping his era up. Reality is these guys want to win and are gonna do what it takes. The best player the cavaliers grabbed from 2004-10 was 38 year old Shaq or sideshow bob. The Bulls added Horace grant, Scottie, bj, paxson, and several other quality role players in a pre zone era where one star could have a larger impact on a game offensively. He left and the cavs lost 63 games a year after winning 61. If losing one guy causes an extra 42 losses, the team was not championship caliber, and no help was coming, not to mention he would have been playing for Mike brown or Byron Scott

. Staying in Cleveland where the best player after him would've been maybe Antwan Jamison would have just meant that the Celtics would've won the east again. They managed to lose a series to a team whose starting back court was raefor Alston and Courtney lee while James was averaging 39/8/8. We can hate on him for a lot of things, but leaving for Miami should not be one of them. If you hate on a guy for leaving a

team behind, then it really just says you were hating on a guy maximizing his championship window. shyt man even KG basically told him he needs to get out of Cleveland on the court after game 6 in 2010, and those guys were his chief competitors in the conference. He was asked about what he said to James after game 6 in the post game press conference and he basically said "if I knew how my career in Minnesota would unfold, I would have gotten out of there sooner". Do we really want more careers unfolding like Barry sanders? All time great suck on a horrible team so he doesn't have a realistic shot at a title? As for Shaq in Los Angeles, they managed to surround him with elden Campbell, Eddie jones, Derek fisher, Robert horry, Nick van exel, and Kobe between 1996 and 1997. He wasn't leaving to join a trash team. They won 53 games the season before he joined them.