The King has become the Emperor.
Standing with his arms raised, imploring the Portland Trailblazers’ faithful to fill the Rose Garden with boos, the once good-natured and fun-loving King LeBron James became the evil cutthroat Emperor LeBron James.
Sort of like that guy from Star Wars, but without the lighting and LeBron hasn’t murdered Samuel L. Jackson. Yet.
Go back a year, and there was LeBron, dancing pregame, engaging in a roughly 32-minute long handshake with Mo Williams and bantering with mop-topped court jester Anderson Varejao. Now, here was LeBron, coldly icing the Blazers with a 3-pointer in overtime, running the break with ruthless assassin Dwyane Wade and bringing out the mean streak buried in Chris Bosh.
It has taken 39 games, almost half the season, but LeBron has finally come to terms with what he has become.
“I’ve kind of accepted this villain role everyone has placed on me,” James told reporters after dropping 44 points on Portland in Miami’s 107-100 overtime win Sunday night. “I’m OK with it. I accept it.”
He wasn’t accepting it on Oct. 26, when Miami was being throttled on national TV by the Boston Celtics. That night also marked the debut of the “What should I do?” commercial, the artsy, kind-of-trippy ad with LeBron basically pleading for fallout from “The Decision” to end.
Then the Heat struggled out of the gate, sitting at 9-8, and a small shoulder-to-shoulder collision between James and Heat coach Erik Spoelstra blowing up into a debate of how fast Pat Riley could descend from the front office on a 24-karat-gold winged horse to save the season.
But a team as talented as the Heat wasn’t going to stay down long. And they didn’t, reeling off a 12-game winning streak, dominating the Lakers in Los Angeles on Christmas Day and going the entire month of December without losing a road game.
Along the way, there was Bosh finally rising to the occasion and outplaying Pau Gasol on Christmas, Wade going off, including a surgical 45-point destruction of the Houston Rockets on Dec. 30 and LeBron continuing to be, well, LeBron.
But when exactly, did LeBron turn evil?
It wasn’t on Christmas, though posting a triple-double on the two-time defending champs and prompting one of the better Kobe Bryant press conferences in recent history was pretty impressive.
It wasn’t the Dec. 17 dismantling of the Knicks in a venomous Madison Square Garden filled with many of the same fans who had spent the last seven years praising LeBron’s every dunk, jumper, rebound and assist in hopes he would take his talents to the Big Apple, not South Beach.
No, I think it was the return to Cleveland, the most-hyped regular season NBA game since Shaq’s return to Los Angeles, ironically, also with the Heat. From the moment the game began, when he was shunned by the same Mo Williams he had designed so many elaborate greetings with, James was locked in.
Surrounded by signs reading “Quitness,” shirts with James’ face in a parody of Broadway’s Lion King, aptly titled, “The Lyin’ King,” James didn’t care. Booed relentlessly every time he touched the ball, which he does a lot, the former King of Akron hammered down 38 points and started the Cavaliers on a 1-20 slide. Miami is 20-1 since.
But what’s certain is that Sunday night, LeBron James came to terms with his inner villain. And if that means he’s going to continue to play some center, and excel at it, post triple-doubles, lead his team back from 20-point holes and ram a dagger in the heart of any team trying to stop him, then I’m all for it.
And while the only thing missing from LeBron’s turn to the dark side were the Heat’s all-black road uniforms, seeing LeBron thrive off Portland’s hate brought to mind a quote from Emperor Palpatine in Return of the Jedi.
“If you will not be turned, you will be destroyed.”