I mean, you did this once before.

Let's try this again.

Could you give us another dramatic reading of Dan's now front page?

This is uncomfortable every time you do this.

This is unpleasant.

This is a tryout.

I won a career in voiceover work, Dan, so bear with me here.

LeBron James, feeling gratitude after four years, in my opinion by Dan Levitard.

The letter in Sports Illustrated was super sweet, had a writer's touch, really nice, perfect really, so perfect, too perfect,

if you're cynical and bittered and hurting. And the fairy tale story itself might even be somehow better than that.

Conquering Hero returns home to rebuild the shattered place.

It was all spun so well that even the Cleveland people who were burning his jersey

and urinating on cakes of his face in public restrooms develop the inconsistent amnesia necessary to overlook

the conquering hero's hand and shattering the place he now returns to rebuild. Such a thin line in

sports between thank you and fuck you. Wow. If you were in the public relations business,

which Sports Illustrated usually isn't,

this is exactly the way you massage all of this, to get the worship and mythology that purifies the polarizing image of a global icon who rented Miami for championships.

Get the premier and most reputable sports publication in America to tell the tale about going home for you.

Those kids in the entourage of LeBron James are smart.

Sports, man. So personal. So emotional. So cool.

It was wildly uncomfortable hearing all of that for reasons that are complicated to explain because yes of course I've always my entire career mocked the idea of people who get too much of

their identity from sports regional sports but also while profiting greatly off how much they

...