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00:00 I'm Melissa Roland with Sports Illustrated and ESPN's The Decision, The Backstory aired
00:08 on Sunday.
00:09 Jill, what did you make of the documentary that explored LeBron James' infamous decision
00:13 to leave Cleveland back in 2010 with a huge announcement on television?
00:17 Well, Melissa, it was interesting to look back at some of those pictures and videos
00:21 and comments from 10 years ago.
00:24 LeBron certainly looked a little bit nervous when he was making that decision and certainly
00:30 it was one of the most criticized decisions ever by an athlete.
00:34 So interesting in that it was Don Van Natta Jr., who was doing the reporting and executive
00:40 producing on this, started the Zinabre Zum March.
00:43 Well, as we know, the COVID-19 pandemic hit about March 11th when the NBA season was suspended.
00:50 So a lot of the interviews were on Zoom.
00:52 Now it was interesting also because he didn't have LeBron James or any of LeBron James'
00:58 team, including Maverick Carter or Rich Paul.
01:01 And the reason for that, which they mentioned on this documentary, was they had already
01:04 done this and spoken about it in More Than an Athlete, which was their documentary that
01:09 aired on Uninterrupted, of course, which he founded with Maverick Carter.
01:12 Now why is that so interesting?
01:14 Well, the whole thing about player empowerment was discussed in the backstory of The Decision.
01:20 And even though this particular decision and the way it happened was universally criticized,
01:25 it set the stage for that player empowerment and, of course, LeBron James' future decisions
01:31 on going back to Cleveland and then, of course, signing his free agent deal with the Lakers
01:36 in 2018.
01:37 And he did those all in very different ways.
01:39 So very interesting to take a little bit of a look back at the decisions of LeBron James.
01:45 [BLANK_AUDIO]