This is a town without pity, and you have to want to play here. You have to have the stomach for the fight, for the microscope, for the unrelenting, suffocating pressure, for the great expectations.
Your skin has to be thick enough to defy the slings and arrows of naysayers. Mike Piazza used to tell people he loved playing in New York because you can be a goat one day but a hero the next. Bill Parcells once told us that in New York, it is either euphoria or disaster, no in-between.
LeBron James didn’t want to play here, and hid behind the convenient explanation that he went to play with Pat Riley’s Heat with Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh to win his elusive first championship after seven years of trying in hometown Akron/Cleveland.
He didn’t want to be the basketball Broadway Joe. Didn’t want the best and brightest lights shining on his basketball genius. New York turned its lonely eyes to you, LeBron James, and you turned away.
Because the burden of carrying the Knick franchise on your back was too big for you, your shoulders aren’t big enough. He wanted more help than he thought Amar’e Stoudemire could give him, even though Carmelo Anthony might be riding in here on his white horse by 2011. Wade and Bosh give The Chicken King cover in Miami. He didn’t want to be The Man here. Just one of The Men on South Beach.
He came up small when it mattered most at the end of the Eastern Conference playoffs, and he came up small again last night when he told Jim Gray on ESPN in Greenwich, Conn., that he didn’t make up his mind until yesterday morning. A King-sized lie, and insult.
The Knicks were out because the fix was in. James, and Wade and Bosh and Riley and Heat coach Erik Spoelstra and Leon Rose, James’ agent, all belong to Creative Artists Agency (CAA). The Chicken King’s half-hearted attempt to get Bosh to Cleveland was a charade. In fact, it is my opinion that the entire free-agent courting of The Chicken King in Cleveland by hyperventilating, groveling NBA owners and coaches and executives was a sham.
You need killer instinct to play here. It’s why Reggie Jackson became
Mr. October here. It’s why the ’86 Mets dominated here. You have to have no fear of the consequences here. It’s what makes Rex Ryan so dangerous. You have to have some Kobe Bryant in you. Some Willis Reed in you. Some Clyde Frazier in you. Some Wally Backman in you. Some Lenny Dykstra in you. Some Keith Hernandez in you. Some CC Sabathia in you. Some Mark Messier in you. Some Derek Jeter in you.
And yes, some Alex Rodriguez in you.
LeBron James wears a Yankees cap, but he never could play for the Yankees. He would never want to endure what A-Rod had to endure all those years before he finally won his ring. A-Rod persevered. He wanted to stay a Yankee when he could have opted out for good. He wanted the eyes of the world on him as he chased the home run record and, of course, more championships in the best place there is to win.
Because you have to burn to be a champion here. You burn to be a champion first, before you burn to be a billionaire global icon.
He had this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to make the Garden the place to see and be seen again. To make the Knicks the hottest ticket in town. To have baby boys in the five boroughs and in Long Island named for him nine months from now. To watch his 6 Knicks jersey sell out in record time.
“It takes courage to play where the lights shine the brightest,” Knicks owner James Dolan said earlier yesterday.
He was talking to The Chicken King.
steve.serby@nypost.com