Then again, James may have led the NBA in scoring last season (30.0 ppg), but he is not an exemplary shooter. While he was shooting at one end of the Schottenstein Center court on Friday evening, Caron Butler of the Washington Wizards took aim at the other. Any high school hoops coach could tell you that Butler has both a prettier release and much greater accuracy.

James, unlike Butler — and unlike Kobe and Larry and MJ — is a scorer, not a shooter. His combination of speed, size and power is unrivaled in the NBA. Jordan was a Bull; LeBron is a bull.

And everyone with a hand to play is bullish on LeBron’s future. This summer reports surfaced that Beijing did not have to be the end of his world tour, that a European League team could potentially throw $50 million per year his way to lure him across the Atlantic. Last week David Stern, the NBA commissioner, expressed doubt that James, whose contract with the Cavs runs two more seasons, would abdicate his NBA throne.

"I guess if they want to induce NBA players at salaries that exceed the budget of the team to play in games that 1,000 to 5,000 people will go to, they're free to do that," Stern said last Thursday. "It's not something that we're seeing at the moment other than something that's good for the players, mostly players at the mid tier, or slightly below, who have an opportunity to ply their trade on a global scale."

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More plausible would be a migration eastward to New York City. Both the Knicks and Nets, the latter of whom are owned in part by Beyonce’s betrothed, are in desperate need of a despot and have enough lucre to satisfy Midas. King James, who has no interest in fueling such rumors for the next twenty months, gently but firmly declines to discuss that topic.

In fact, watching him interact with his teammates, he seems quite content being the ruler of no more than the wine-and-gold. On Tuesday night in Philadelphia, with the stands less than half-full, James stood on the sidelines in the waning moments of a tight game. Again, a preseason game. After reserve point guard Daniel Gibson hit a shot to give the Cavs a cushion in the final minute, a broad grin crossed LeBron’s face. “Boobie!” he shrieked to the third-year pro.

The nucleus of a squad that has advanced to the Eastern finals the past two seasons returns: James, center Zydrunas Ilgauskas, forwards Ben Wallace and Anderson Varejao, swingmen Aleksandar Pavlovic and Wally Szczerbiak, and guards Gibson and Delonte West. The addition of Mo Williams at the point puts Cleveland in even better position to bring the city its first pro sports title since Otto Graham and the Browns won the NFL championship in 1955.

Back in Columbus, the Cavs begin making their way out of the tunnel and onto the floor. James hangs back, waiting for Varejao, who straggled in after the pregame prayer (last year Varejao, a contract holdout, straggled in around mid-December). The King smiles, throws a friendly arm around his teammate’s neck. The pair hop out of the tunnel together, chanting, “Championship! Championship! Championship!”

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