Friday, May 14, 1:30 p.m. Sports gossip site Terez Owens runs this item:

It is, verbatim, taken from the chain emails circulating; though by calling it “exclusive” and claiming it comes from “[his] source in Cleveland,” it gains legitimacy in the eyes of those who don’t understand how this thing works, or just want to believe it.

And…

Wednesday, May 19 Calvin Murphy, who could not dig up a character witness for his own trial for allegedly molesting 5 of his 14 children, goes on a sports talk radio show. He says that the Delonte West/Gloria James story is “absolutely true,” that he’s got multiple sources, and that West wasn’t the only person intimately involved with James’s mother.

Terez Owens cites this as confirmation.

We’ll never know for sure what did or didn’t happen, but it sure seems like this report was false from the start. Deadspin certainly thinks so.

The perplexing thing is Murphy’s confirmation. Why would he say what he said if he had any doubts? Of course, we’re talking about a guy who was accused of molesting five of his children. He was acquitted, but still.

Where does this story/rumor go from here? Will we ever hear from LeBron or Delonte on the subject? Should they even bother to respond?

Per Gather.com…

During an interview Thursday with local ESPN Houston affiliate 97.5 FM radio station, retired Houston Rockets guard Calvin Murphy claimed that according to his sources inside the NBA, the rumored affair between LeBron James’ mother Gloria and Cavaliers teammate Delonte West is ”absolutely true.”

In his interview with the hosts of “The Drive,” when asked what he thought of the rumor, Murphy was quoted as saying, “It ain’t no rumor. Unfortunately, my sources in the NBA tell me that it’s absolutely true. My sources, and they’re legit, tell me the only people that didn’t know it was happening was LeBron and me.”

Listen to the interview here.

He went on to predict that LeBron will sign with another team this summer.

The rumor goes that LeBron learned about the news before Game 4, which could explain his suspect performance in that game. Let’s not overlook the fact that Delonte West went 0-7 for three points in that same game.

I don’t know what’s going to happen this summer, but I’d bet the farm that LeBron and Delonte aren’t on the same team next season.

Photo from fOTOGLIF

Via Twitter, Sam Amico of NBA.com says the Cavs are planning to let Brown and his entire staff go.

Official word of Mike Brown firing expected to be no later than Sunday, possibly as early as Friday. Entire staff expected to be let go.

This really shouldn’t shock anyone after the Cavs’ second-round exit. Brown is a very good defensive coach, but has always struggled to get the most out of his team on the offensive end of the floor. Most recently, he played with his rotations to the point where the 8, 9 and 10 guys didn’t know if they were coming or going.

The move clears the way for the Cavs to hire a new, presumably LeBron-approved, head coach sometime in the next few weeks.

By the way, Mike Brown was the 2009 Coach of the Year. Funny how things work.

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ESPN’s exclusive telecast of the Eastern Conference semifinal Game 6 on May 13 averaged a 6.6 household rating and 8.93 million viewers, according to Nielsen data, the second most ever for the network with a basketball game. Celts-Cavs trailed only the 6.9 rating and 9.88 million watchers ESPN averaged with its Game 4 coverage of the 2009 Western Conference finals between the Los Angeles Lakers and Denver Nuggets.

The Cleveland/Boston telecast is now ESPN’s highest-rated and most-viewed conference semifinal to date, surpassing last year’s Game 6 between the Lakers and Houston Rockets, which posted a 5.4 rating and 7.35 million viewers.

ESPN officials said the May 13 telecast is the worldwide leader’s third most-viewed program of 2010 and the fifth most-watched NBA playoff game in cable history among households and viewers.

Now that LeBron has been eliminated from the postseason, it will be interesting to see if his pending free agency overshadows what is shaping up to be a pretty competitive NBA final four.

Bill Simmons, ESPN: You cannot call what happened in the Cavs-Celtics series an upset. Boston played better in five of the six games. The C’s had four of the five best players. They were better defensively. Their best player (Rajon Rondo) played better than Cleveland’s best player (LeBron James). They had playoff-proven guys who kept coming through. They had better crowds. They showed more heart. This was not an upset … but still, it felt like one. And only because we were duped by Cleveland’s faux urgency (for most of the season, it felt genuine) and Boston’s retro-urgency (for most of the season, it was dormant). The playoffs hinge on toughness, chemistry, defense, leadership and urgency. Cleveland lost all those battles. Every one of them. … If he cares about winning titles (multiple) and reaching his full potential as a player, he has only one move: the Chicago Bulls. That’s always been the play. If you’ve been listening to my podcast or reading this column, you know that I’ve been touting this possibility since the winter, and here’s why: Deep down, I think LeBron (and, just as important, the people around him) realizes that he needs one more kick-ass player to make his life easier. That means Miami or Chicago. And really, I can’t imagine him signing with Miami because Dwyane Wade is almost too good. LeBron wants help, but he doesn’t want to be perceived as riding someone else’s coattails, either. Wade might be the best player alive for all we know — he certainly was in 2006, and he’s been banged-up and trapped on bad teams ever since. No, Chicago makes more sense. Derrick Rose and Joakim Noah proved they were warriors these past two springs. They could be LeBron’s Pippen/Grant or McHale/DJ. Easily. Rose could take the creative load off LeBron on nights when he doesn’t have it. Rose could come through a few times in the clutch. Rose could hide some of LeBron’s faults. It’s the single smartest basketball move for LeBron James.

Kelly Dwyer, Ball Don’t Lie: Whether by design or defeat or both, he’s made it possible to get out while the going is great. To hand-pick another group of sycophants to have his way and never have to answer for His Way, however misguided. The tri-state area, Miami, Chicago, who knows? He doesn’t even want to know. He just wants to get back to remembering what it’s like to be the self-proclaimed “King.” The sort of guy who has to remind you what he wants his nickname to be. Doesn’t have to answer for nine turnovers in a deciding game. Won’t have to answer for not attempting to take control of the game until the latter stages of the fourth quarter, and only in the form of a couple of desperate 3-pointers that happened to go in. Won’t have to answer for that defense, which was embarrassing. Just has to answer to the question, “Who’s the NBA’s best player?” It’s still James, you know. Just because we don’t really care for him at the present, it doesn’t take away from his greatness. We’ve all got brains big enough to handle him being the game’s best player and a crushing failure as a leader when it counted most in this series. If anything, it should add to the enmity that you’ve no doubt developed over the last week for this ghost. This person who should know better, but doesn’t want to hear it.

Israel Gutierrez, Miami Herald: If it is true that James is about winning first, as he insisted in his postgame, post-series, post-Cleveland interview Thursday, then this is an automatic. If his obvious frustration with Cavs teammates and their inability to function without him is a driving force for LeBron, then playing alongside Wade will offer him exactly what he desires. When you consider that the Heat can sell a player like Michael Beasley to a team with salary-cap space to create enough space to sign a third substantial star, possibly a big man like an Amare Stoudemire or Carlos Boozer, then it only makes Miami more intriguing because of the real possibility a true dynasty can exist. There are two arguments against Miami that tend to dominate, neither of them making much sense. The first tends to be ego. As in, James’ ego won’t let him come to Wade’s town and not be the obvious attraction. It might be Wade’s town, but in basketball terms, it’s LeBron’s world, as Kevin Garnett confirmed after Thursday’s game. It has been for a half decade, practically, and sharing space with Wade can only help his global takeover because it’ll finally offer him that championship that has escaped him. No matter where he goes, James will not play second fiddle. Besides, it’s practically necessary these days, when you think about it, to have a player of similarly superstar caliber by your side. Kobe Bryant had arguably the best post player in the league, at the time, helping him win each of his four titles, first Shaquille O’Neal and now Pau Gasol. No one does this alone.

Photo from fOTOGLIF

Heading into this year’s playoffs, the conventional wisdom was that if the Cavs won a title, or at least made it to the Finals, LeBron James would likely re-sign to continue his quest for a championship. But if the Cavs suffered another pre-Finals flame out like last year’s Eastern Conference Finals loss to the Magic, he would sign elsewhere.

Well, we all know what happened. An aging but experienced (and cohesive) Celtics team basically dismantled the Cavs in the last three games of the series. Every Celtic knew his role and team flat out executed better, both offensively and defensively.

Where does this leave LeBron? He said after the game that his team had “a plan” and was going to execute that plan. Forget the fact that a few questions before he was asked if he had a plan and answered with a resounding, “No.” Of course he has a plan. He’s being disingenuous when he says that he hasn’t thought about the different scenarios that could play out this postseason and offseason.

He’s clearly not happy with Mike Brown. And he can’t be happy with Antawn Jamison, Shaquille O’Neal or even Mo Williams, who scored well in Game 6, but was very up and down in the series. Shaq won’t be back, and Brown is probably on his way out too. He had a tough task of trying to keep team cohesion with the mid-season introduction of Jamison and the late-season loss of O’Neal. But the bottom line is that over the past two seasons he’s had more talent than his opposition and hasn’t gotten it done. If Dan Gilbert thinks that firing Brown increases the possibility that LeBron will re-up, then he’ll do it in a New York minute.

Lately, we’ve been hearing the rumors that John Calipari is at the top of LeBron’s list, which is funny because he’s a far better recruiter than he is a coach, and recruiting isn’t going to help him at the NBA level. Over the past three seasons — two at Memphis and one at Kentucky — he has taken teams with superior talent and failed to win big games. He is a silver-tongued maestro at getting great prospects to play for him, but they’re usually gone after a year or two and end their collegiate careers with a loss. What about this spells NBA championship?

Cal doesn’t even need to come to Cleveland to coach the King. There’s also the rumor that the Bulls would hire him if they thought it gave them an inside track at signing LeBron. So even before the race for LeBron begins, there may be a mad scramble to pry Calipari out of Kentucky, where he’s spent just one-plus season with a revolving door of a roster.

There’s no doubt about it — LeBron loves this attention. His ego is justifiably immense, and as Adrian Wojnarowski wrote, LeBron and his entourage are going to milk this courtship for all it’s worth. Now that the Cavs’ early exit is complete, everyone expects the King to leave town…

…and that’s the easy thing to do.

If LeBron wants to play on a bigger stage, like New York or Chicago, or even Los Angeles, this is chance to do so. Nearly everyone would understand if he bailed on the Cavs given the way that the team played against the Celtics. Sure, LeBron is partially to blame — his Game 5 performance was pathetic and his nine turnovers in Game 6 largely offset his triple-double — but no one in his camp is going to point the finger at the King. In his world, he is never to blame. He has said that he has “spoiled” us with his usually wonderful play, so when he has a bad game or two, everyone acts like the sky is falling.

But the sky is falling, at least in Cleveland. To paraphrase Bill Simmons, if LeBron bolts, basketball is dead in The Forest City. It will deal another blow to an area of the country that is still reeling from the latest recession.

Does this matter to LeBron? Does he feel responsible to the city of Cleveland? Only he knows.

But make no mistake about it — the easy thing to do is jump ship. It wouldn’t be difficult to leave the incohesive, overpaid roster behind and start anew somewhere else. To stay is to keep fighting, to finish what he started, to embrace the adversity and frustration of the last few seasons and use it as motivation to finally bring the city of Cleveland a championship.

No matter how comfortable LeBron is in northeast Ohio, sticking with the Cavs is the tough thing to do.

Photos from fOTOGLIF