LeBron to Greece in 2010?

If LeBron does jump overseas, how big of a story is it?
Biggest story of the year?
Biggest story of the decade?
Realistically, the chances of this are somewhere between .0001 and .0002 percent, but if some crazy billionaire team owner decides to give it a go, he'd have to at least listen, no? Would lose out on the Nike deal, could increase his celebrity overseas and have ridiculous leverage coming back to the NBA.

That is, if his plan wasn't just to be the CEO of Def Jam all along. Then he'll go to the Nets.

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2008/writers/ian_thomsen/08/01/lebron.greece/index.html

 

I was reading something on this a couple days ago. There's absolutely no salary cap over there for most of the leagues. If one of those owners simply wanted to see if he could get an American audience to pay attention to his team, there's no stopping them.
And I'm not so sure Nike would take all its money off the table. That would be another market(s) -- Greece, Turkey, Italy -- Nike wants to further crack.

 

$40 million a year net? That would be insane.

Hell, I could see Nike encouraging him to do it just to get him out of Cleveland.

 

But according to Drew Carey, Cleveland rocks!

 

I love going to Cleveland. But I guarantee you Nike would be salivating at the possibility of putting James on a team close to the NYC market.

 

Not Greece. One of the better Italian or French teams, maybe, or perhaps Real Madrid.

But in all honesty, somebody like Lebron James or Kobe Bryant would be too expensive in the prime of their careers for a European team to consider unless a shoe company kicks in big money to help out.

 

cleveland needs to go back to the ehlo-era orange unis. i liked those.

 

LeBron will probably use Greece just like every other NBA star has used Mark Cuban over the years. To drive up his own value and get an even sweeter deal elsewhere. This goes on all the time; Europe is just an added wrinkle.

 

Not possible. There's a maximum salary. The Cavs will offer it two seconds after his contract expires. The contract's probably already written up.

 

There's a maximum salary in Greece? You sure about that?

 

Right, LeBron has always been a max player. A Greek suitor can't add NBA value unless it's through guaranteed perks like access to a private jet etc. in the contract.

 

I believe he's saying that there is a max contract in the NBA, therefore he can't use Greece to leverage more money contractually from the NBA.