Exits: Leaving home, finding home

Professor and writer Courtney M. Cox on stage managing LeBron James' 'The Decision' special, Jarrett Allen, and why there's no easy way for an athlete to be.

“If you’d told me when I was back in Brooklyn that five or six years down the line I’d be on a new team … with one of the best records in the entire NBA? I’d have thought: ‘Where’d I get traded to? Boston? L.A.? Golden State?’

‘No, Cleveland.’

No disrespect but… What?” — Jarrett Allen

On the morning of July 8, 2010, I packed everything I needed for the day in my car and, closing the door, realized I locked my keys inside.

Looking into the window, I saw my bags tucked neatly into the passenger seat. I reached for my phone to call roadside assistance, AAA, or anyone willing to hack into my Honda Civic. Unable to locate it, I quickly realized it was inside with all my other belongings. On any other day, this unfortunate event would be annoying, but at that moment, it was catastrophic.

That year, I lived in Hartford, Connecticut, and worked in nearby Bristol at ESPN as a stage manager. And on that summer day, I planned to head to Greenwich to work on The Decision, the one-hour special dedicated to LeBron James and his free agency selection of his next team. For weeks, folks debated where King James would relocate his throne. I argued with friends in our group chats, all of us full of delulu as we felt sure we had picked up on some nuance, some sign of where he could go that others may have missed. My stance was simple: the creation of The Decision means James definitely stays in Cleveland. Leaving the hometown team with this level of spectacle felt to me the equivalent of breaking up with your longtime girlfriend on national television: it's not cute, and you shouldn't do it.

That day, after using the phone at my neighborhood Dunkin’ Donuts to call a locksmith, I eventually managed to get into my car. I then worked on an event that would ultimately shift my own career trajectory, first by cementing my desire to work in sports television and later by influencing my research focus on labor, media, and basketball. I recall the frantic nature of preparing for The Decision – keeping rival journalists from infiltrating that Boys and Girls Club gym, appeasing sponsors' product placement, and monitoring the growing crowd that treated the event like a tailgate. Eventually, LeBron would appear — slightly nervous but resolute as he would eventually deliver the now-iconic phrase regarding his talents and South Beach.

Heartbreak enveloped the city of Cleveland; the smoke of James jerseys emanated across Ohio. The racially-tinged vitriol hurled towards an athlete exercising his negotiated right to free agency shifted LeBron’s image from lovable superstar to a selfish superteam member prone to bombastic pep rallies with declarations of “not one, not two…” but a plethora of championships supposedly in the queue.

As we approach the 15th anniversary of that event, a lot has changed. James would, of course, return to Cleveland, framing his “coming home” narrative in Sports Illustrated and declaring his desire to bring the city a championship. A reconciliation rivaled only by the recent (albeit short-lived) rejuvenation of Bennifer, LeBron’s return to the Cavs and his resulting success seemingly closed that particular chapter of hoops history. However, what it has opened are new ways of thinking about athletes and their relationship to media.

I was reminded of this as Maverick Carter delivered my college’s commencement speech years ago. He described The Decision as one of the biggest missteps in his career, but one that became the catalyst for Uninterrupted, a “by athletes for athletes” media brand and more recently, The Springhill Company, a development and production company founded by Carter and James that continues to churn out quality content in a seemingly saturated media ecosystem.

Meanwhile, in Cleveland, it’s been less of a Hollywood story. There’s a bit of baggage that comes with having a famous ex; everyone is always looking to see if you'll carve out a new identity without them. Cleveland has grappled with this as best as it can, slowly stacking a squad to represent The Land in the years since LeBron departed for L.A. Given this lineage, Jarrett Allen’s recent piece in The Players’ Tribune is another type of public declaration, one that feels reparative as a love letter to the city.

Allen’s column in the Tribune, documenting his experience being traded and finding his footing in a new place, is also a reminder of how often players aren’t in control of their destiny or must take their talents to other cities, without a TV special. They find out with the rest of us — Woj bombs and all. This is especially true for someone like Allen, bound up in a four-team trade that required him to navigate a bit of nuance in figuring out exactly where he would land. However, as I've discovered through my own research on athletes navigating their labor, longevity in the game and even success at the highest level are predicated upon malleability.

Jarrett Allen's documentation of the journey goes a little like this:

“Each year, we got better and better. That year when I came over, we missed the playoffs. By a lot. The next season, though, we just barely missed the play-in. Then we make it in but lose in the first round. The next year, we make the conference semifinals. And now, best record in the conference. That type of improvement… there’s no magic formula. It’s a lot of big and little things over time.”

Chemistry, setbacks, experimenting with lineups, finding an identity, a team culture — all part of the process. If we can take a beat here and distance ourselves from the hateration often heaped on Build-A-Bear teams, I think it's really fun to see a team improve over time, navigating injury, youth vs. experience, what the data says, and what the embodied knowledge teaches us.

I think there’s something productive about incremental growth that reminds me of what’s possible even in the personal. That yoga move you couldn’t execute a month ago. The confidence in speaking that new language since last year. It just hits different. It's the difference between binge-watching and waiting a week for the next episode. Two-hour delivery vs. playing the long game. We give up too easily — albums and films come out, and we instantly label it classic or trash — no in between. We issue grades for trades within hours and before anyone takes the court. We fire good coaches after they reach the conference finals.

For me, this Cavs team has been fantastic to watch, and their exit in the Eastern Conference semis for the second year in a row is a bit of a stuck ferment, but not a reason to throw the batch away. It's a bit disheartening (albeit predictable) to see criticisms of Jarrett Allen's performance in the Pacers series as a reason to offload him this summer. The lazy assessments of Allen as "soft" and "not strong enough" to hold his own in the playoffs fail to acknowledge the lessons acquired by this team with each year of experience together (as well as Allen's physicality). Breaking up the core four isn't the solution.

Former Cav center Channing Frye has said as much: “I don’t think this is a (roster) blow-up situation. This is a reality check of regular season ain’t playoffs.” Like any relationship, knowing when to stay and when to go is paramount.

Jarrett Allen, in particular, offers us something really important as we see ourselves out the door this NBA season. While LeBron and his contemporaries have started their own media empires, a younger generation of players, like Allen, can tell their story on athlete-founded platforms like The Players’ Tribune, revealing his ability to be more than just an incredible rebounder. Off the court, Allen’s falling in love with Cleveland, talking about video games and topography. He has a cat named Sasha Fierce! How can you not get into this goodness?

But I’ve realized that some folks aren’t in on all the range that this era of NBA player is offering us. Questions about Allen’s commitment to the game, his toughness, or whether he should have stepped into the fray during Game 4 when Indiana’s Benedict Mathurin punched De’Andre Hunter dominate the conversation in ways that make me question what journalists and fans want from the association today. If, for example, Allen had instantly squared up, we already know (as he does) what the next morning’s headlines would read and what talking (screaming) heads would say across the networks.

So, while there's no easy way for NBA players to be — whether they take their career prospects into their own hands or pursue interests outside of the game — there's also no proper place to be, especially with the continued narratives around markets. Way too many folks on the internet are concerned about this as if they moonlight as agents or NBA brass. The pearl clutching of the eventual NBA Finals matchup is a testament. But basketball is basketball is basketball.

For Jarrett Allen in Cleveland, the small market is just right, and the slow burn of building a team that can eventually go all the way is enough. “Just immaculate vibes on full display,” Allen writes. Immaculate, indeed.

Dr. Courtney M. Cox is an Associate Professor in the Department of Indigenous, Race, and Ethnic Studies (IRES) at the University of Oregon. Her research examines issues related to identity, technology, and labor through sport and wine. Her book, Double Crossover: Gender, Media, and Politics in Global Basketball (University of Illinois Press, 2025) considers how Black women and non-binary athletes maneuver through the global sports-media complex. She is also co-director (with Dr. Perry B. Johnson) of The Sound of Victory, a multi-platform digital humanities project located at the intersection of music, sound, and sport. She previously worked for ESPN, Longhorn Network, NPR-affiliate KPCC, and the WNBA's Los Angeles Sparks.