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Dear LeBron,

I know you said you wouldn't talk about next season until this season was over, but I'm not asking you to say anything. All I want you to do is think about it and get back to me (or someone with far more pull). Sure, this might end up being as fruitful as giving an attractive woman my number at a club and hoping she'll call me back, but it's worth a shot.

You need to sign with the Clippers.

OK, you can stop laughing now. You can also tell your boys Maverick, Rich and Randy to stop rolling around the floor too. I get it. It's a long shot. About as much of a long shot as a kid from Akron, Ohio, becoming the biggest name in the sports world and making the Cavaliers a household name.

Now is not the time for you to be predictable or complacent. This is your time to shake the sports landscape and change the way you and your future team is viewed.

The way I see it, you have three possible destinations, Cleveland, New York and Los Angeles.

No matter what happens this season with the Cavs it's time for you to leave Cleveland. No offense, but you and your boys are starting to remind me of a more affluent version of the high school clique that's still living in the same town six years after graduation. It's time for you to move on and leave the nest. Ohio will always be your hometown, but it doesn't need to be your home right now.

Now everyone thinks you're going to New York, but I don't see it. I know it's the big city of dreams but as Grandmaster Flash once said, "Everything in New York ain't always what it seems." New York is old school. You yearning to play at Madison Square Garden is like me yearning for a table at Sardi's. It's cool for talking about the old days with the retired crowd, but I picture you as trying to carve out your own niche instead of being another footnote for an already established franchise.

You need to come to Los Angeles. There's no reason to continue playing in 25-degree weather and snowstorms when the climate in Los Angeles is a consistent 75 degrees and sunny. You and your crew would become the real-life version of Entourage in a city that gravitates toward superstars like no other.

I know what you're thinking. "Yeah, that's all well and good, but we're talking about the Clippers here. Nobody wants to play for the Clippers."

Well, nobody wanted to play for the Clippers until you changed the game. Listen, Orlando was a dump until Walt Disney built his kingdom in the swamps. The Bulls were a bottom-tier franchise before Michael Jordan was drafted by Chicago. And how many blue-chip basketball players do you think went to Duke before Mike Krzyzewski took that job?

Playing for the Clippers could be your blank canvas, LeBron. This team is what you want to make of it. If you sign with the Clippers, everyone will think you are as crazy as Bill Gates dropping out of college and investing everything he had in something called computers. If you want to truly establish your place in sports history you will set out to do the impossible: make the Clippers relevant, better yet, make the Clippers champions.

As you enter your prime and turn the Clippers around, your rival down the hallway, Kobe Bryant, will be entering the twilight of his career and will only be able to sit and watch while you convert fair-weather Lakers fans wearing No. 24 jerseys into Clippers fans wearing No. 23 jerseys. This will not only be your town, but you will be able to exploit it more than Bryant ever has by making movies, hosting award shows and staring in commercials. It's something you've dabbled in while in Cleveland but could thrive in with Hollywood serving as your backdrop.

While you may be focused on this season and your newest acquisition, Antawn Jamison, who came to you thanks in large part to the Clippers, the Clippers are already making plans for you next season. With the moves they made before the trade deadline the Clippers put themselves in a position to offer you a contract worth about $100 million over five years, which is the same deal you'd get from any team outside of Cleveland. Not only that, but with Mike Dunleavy stepping down as head coach and staying on as the general manager, you could call the shots.

You could pick your next coach. You could pick the free agents with whom you want to play. Shoot, the Clippers are probably so desperate to sign you and change their image they'd be willing to give you a blank sheet of paper and a box of markers and allow you to draw up a new logo and uniforms. Like I said, this is a blank canvas.

The beauty of signing with the Clippers is you're not jumping on the Titanic as some would have you believe. You'd be signing with a team where you'd be surrounded by Chris Kaman, Baron Davis, Eric Gordon and Blake Griffin on opening day. It's not as dire as you'd think. If you can get the best record in the league with Zydrunas Ilgauskas, Anderson Varejao, Delonte West and Mo Williams in the starting lineup with you, anything is possible.

No one thinks you'll sign with the Clippers. Everyone thinks it will be impossible to turn around the franchise but that's exactly why you should do it. You wouldn't just be known as the greatest basketball player of your generation but a miracle worker as well. And best of all you'd be doing it in Hollywood where you can be the leading man of your own fairy-tale story when it's all said and done.

Sincerely, Arash

mattfish wrote:Can we aggregate these type of articles in one thread, so LeBron can read them easily in one place? Also, who wants to start a campaign on Facebook to "Bring the King to LA"? Or maybe there's already one? We need to show him that the fans in the city want him here!

For the better part of a year, the Los Angeles Clippers have been lurking around the fringes of the 2010 free agent marketplace. For bored sportswriters and denizens of NBA message boards, the Clippers have been a fun hypothetical in the LeBron James parlor game -- whether James has any interest in the Clippers is an entirely other matter.

Wednesday, the realm of possibility became a little bit larger for the Clippers, when they managed to shoehorn themselves into the Antawn Jamison deal. Cleveland’s acquisition of their coveted stretch-4 will undoubtedly be the lead story, but the Clippers were somehow able to dump $5.5 million in 2010-11 payroll by offloading Al Thornton onto the Wizards and Sebastian Telfair onto the Cavaliers. In the process, the Clippers have established themselves as a legitimate contender for the league’s elite free agents this summer.

The Clippers will enter the summer with a skeletal roster consisting of only Baron Davis, Eric Gordon, Blake Griffin, Chris Kaman and DeAndre Jordan -- with just over $33 million in salary commitments. Assuming they keep their first-round draft pick and depending on the salary cap, the Clippers will have somewhere in the neighborhood of $15-$16 million range to spend, which will be about the amount needed to pay a maximum salary, maybe a bit shy.

For Mike Dunleavy, the primary target seems obvious enough. But what happens in the likely event that LeBron James chooses to stay in Cleveland or points east? It's that old dilemma: If cap space exists on a spreadsheet and there's no one around to claim it, does it really exist?

teamCHItown wrote:Bulls poster here. I never really stray from my board but now that you guys have max cap space, I see you along with us as the favorites to land Lebron. Well, now that it seems NY might be able to afford two max guys maybe them too. I doubt it though because to get that space they have to renounce Lee and some other guys and they will be awful.

You guys:

Kaman
Griffin
Lebron
Gordon
Davis

is arguable as good of a core as Lebron can go to, at least outright as a FA. Also I agre the city of LA should be a huge attraction. The Clippers/Lakers rivalry would be like it has never been before. It may go from a non-rivalry to the best in the league.

That's the thing you guys have been able to do like us. have a good core that Lebron compliments and the max cap space to sign him outright. Plus a great city and market. He could obviously make the Clippers a reborn franchise with a totally different image forever.

Kaman
Griffin
Gordon
Davis

vs.

Noah
Deng
Hinrich
Rose

That's tough. I guess I'll have to see more of Griffin.