A Summer's Prelude

In New York, concrete jungle where dreams are made of, it’ll make you feel brand new.

That song we've all heard a few too many times but still kind of like popped into my head tonight as the final seconds ticked away in the Celtics/Cavs game.

The 2009-10 season is over for LeBron James. Again it has ended short of the ultimate goal, a championship.

So now, we wait. It’s 47 days ‘til free agency begins.

I know that from the LeBron Watch countdown clock on ESPNNewYork.com.

The circus has now officially begun.

Yes, the speculation will be out of hand. It’s already beginning to build. And you can be sure that LeBron will milk this for all it’s worth.

I read this in an another article and it’s really true. LeBron went straight from high school to the NBA. While college coaches surely showed interest in him, it was never a big secret that LeBron would bypass college. Now, LeBron gets to live the recruiting process out. He gets to be showered with attention by a bunch of teams vying for him.

I do not expect LeBron’s decision to be particularly quick. And right now, on May 14, I do not expect LeBron to return to Cleveland.

There is a lot of speculation about LeBron to Chicago. But I still in my gut believe it comes down to New York or Cleveland. He either remains loyal to the city that worships him, his home of Ohio or indulges himself in business and money aspirations in the Big Apple.

None of us really know what is going through LeBron’s mind. Even with my gut acclimations, I have no idea what he wants, if those factors are really involved in his decision. I have no idea if he feels an obligation to deliver Cleveland its long-awaited championship or wants to bring about a basketball renaissance at the Garden.

The next two months will be filled with speculation. But as a Knicks fan, this is all we have right now. There has been no hope since Patrick Ewing retired. The Big Apple has been without a big superstar for more than a decade.

Now is the time when that could change. So, we might as well indulge in the fun of this chase. After sitting through years of mismanagement, bloated contracts and miserable play, the summer of 2010 is a time where there’s finally some hope.

Hope is a strange concept for the Knicks. It’s been lost for a while. Sitting through draft nights, watching the Bulls use lottery picks for the steep price of Eddy Curry clogging up the Knicks' payroll, the court and his own arteries. And that’s just one example.

This could all be a bust. The Knicks could end up signing Joe Johnson to a max contract and wallow in mediocrity for seven more years. But for the next few months, I’ll be hoping the cap clearing, the years of Garden lifelessness, were all for something bigger, for the chance to be relevant again as an NBA franchise.

LeBron gives the Knicks that chance.

There will surely be plenty more to say about this in the coming months.

But for now, Jay-Z can say it best. LeBron needs to get out his iPod, get into the Empire State of Mind and think about what could be…