One thing that is often overlooked with regard to LeBron’s pending free agency is just how much of an economic impact he has on the city of Cleveland. One pundit suggested that the value of the Cavs’ franchise would drop $100 million if he signed elsewhere and obviously the tickets and merchandising would plummet as well. And this is a city that can ill-afford a loss in revenue like that.

John Hollinger examines the rumored big-name sidekicks that LeBron may find himself playing with next season and tries to figure out who’s the best fit. This article requires an Insider subscription, so I don’t want to excerpt too much, but it’s an interesting read if you are a numbers guy (or gal).

The four criteria Hollinger used were: 1) he will not hog the ball (low Usage Rate, relatively speaking), 2) he will space the floor (Long 2 %), 3) he will be offensively efficient (True Shooting %) and 4) he will crash the boards (Offensive Rebound Rate).

Hollinger combined those factors in the following way.

Using this data, I created a “LeBron Rating” for each player by taking three-fourths of the player’s true shooting percentage, subtracting half his usage rate, adding his offensive rebound rate and subtracting twice his turnover rate.

I don’t really like it when stats guys start arbitrarily adjusting numbers by “taking 3/4,” “subtracting half,” “adding” and “subtracting twice” to adjust the numbers. I would probably adjust each stat from a level of 1 to 100, or maybe pull in the league average to come up with a factor for each stat.

But this isn’t my exercise. Here’s what Hollinger found:

The perfect companion: Chris Bosh
Bosh hits every check mark on the list above. He’s an outstanding midrange shooter who would provide a fearsome weapon on the pick-and-pop, something James has never really had in Cleveland. His offensive rebound rate (9.9 percent) was in the top third of power forwards, which is amazing considering how often he played outside. His turnover rate was in the bottom third and his TS% (59.2) was outstanding.

I don’t think this should come as too big of a surprise. Even though Bosh has said he thinks he’s a player that a team can build around, his game is ideal for a sidekick role with another really, really good player. A LeBron/Bosh pick-and-pop would be devastating, and he’s good enough on the block that LeBron can take a breather on offense every so often.

Click here to see the rest of the list. A few names at the bottom are Baron Davis, Derrick Rose, Dwyane Wade and Devin Harris, who are all guards who dominate the ball.

If I were building around LeBron, I’d want to add Bosh (or Stoudemire) to give him a good pick-and-roll/pop guy. At the other three positions, I’d have two guards who are good defenders that can shoot the three (and take it to the hole occasionally) and another big who can crash the boards and hit 15-footers from the baseline.

So how do LeBron and Bosh hook up? The Knicks would be the easiest, because the franchise has the cap space to sign two big-name free agents outright. Miami would also have room to sign two max players if they are able to move Michael Beasley in a salary dump. The two could also meet in Chicago if the Raptors or Cavs would want to take on Luol Deng and another player.

Photo from fOTOGLIF

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.

With Boston’s impressive win in Game 5 on Tuesday night, the series has once again swung the Celtics’ way, and they have a chance to close out the Cavs in Game 6 on Thursday.

Has there ever been more riding on a conference semifinal playoff game?

While there are those that believe LeBron James is more likely to leave Cleveland if the Cavs were to win the title, the general consensus is just opposite. If the Cavs suffer another pre-Finals flame out, most NBA fans believe that LeBron will sign elsewhere this summer.

But it’s not like LeBron had one of his monster near-triple-double games and his teammates let him down. The other Cavs shot 46% from the field, 45% from 3PT and hit 18-of-22 free throws. Shaquille O’Neal posted 21-4 (hitting 7-of-10 free throws) along with four blocks.

Meanwhile, LeBron shot 3-of-14 from the field (0-4 from 3PT) and scored just 15 points. For the first three quarters, he settled for long jumper after long jumper and missed most of them. Once again, his unwillingness to go in the post limited his options in a game when his jumper just wasn’t falling. Two of the game’s great wings — Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant — made/make a living on the block, especially when they were having trouble scoring elsewhere.

Defensively for the Cavs, it was another story.

There were times in the third quarter that Mike Brown looked like his life was flashing before his eyes. The Celtics shot 55% from the field, but the guy who spearheaded that hot shooting night — Ray Allen (8-for-13. 6-for-9 from 3PT) — hit some tough shots. The bottom line is that the Cavs are having trouble hiding Mo Williams defensively. When he’s on Ray-Ray, they run him off of screens until Allen gets an open look. Rajon Rondo just takes him to the hole. (Maybe more Delonte West is in order?)

When the Celtics weren’t going after Williams, they were feeding the ball to Kevin Garnett on the block. Since last year’s playoff loss to the Magic, the Cavs were so worried about matching up with Orlando’s “stretch 4” — Rashard Lewis — that they forgot about Garnett’s ability to hit the turnaround over Antawn Jamison in the post.

Now I’m not writing the Cavs off. They came out with a vengeance in Boston in Game 3 and they are perfectly capable of doing it again. I fully expect a great performance from LeBron in particular.

But what if the Celtics close out the series? What happens then?

Suddenly, LeBron is in play for a number of teams, namely the Knicks, Bulls, Nets, Heat…who knows, maybe even the Clippers. It would throw Dwyane Wade’s summer into question. Right now, it looks like he’s staying put and hoping that a power forward will join him in South Florida. But if LeBron is on the move, maybe Wade would join forces with him in New York, or maybe he’d convince him to come to Miami. Suddenly, instead of being the top free agent option for the Heat, Chris Bosh has to wait for LeBron to make up his mind. All the way down the line — Amare Stoudemire, Joe Johnson, Rudy Gay, David Lee — everyone would be affected.

If LeBron does change teams, it would alter the NBA landscape forever. Remember, he’s 25 and is just now getting into his prime. Whoever is lucky enough to sign LeBron will likely get the best that he ever has to offer. And we’re talking about a guy who has already won two MVP awards.

This is not just another playoff series. The final score of Game 6 could reverberate for a long, long time.

Photo from fOTOGLIF

— LeBron James, via Ohio.com

Brian Windhorst, Cleveland.com: It was quite obvious the Cavs were uncomfortable and in search mode from the top on down. Mike Brown was changing lineups and strategies on the fly, the defense was a mess for long stretches and the offense was in its old, but infamous, all-James, all-the-time mode in the final minutes. This, of course, is what the Cavs were afraid of after a somewhat ineffective preseason. While there’s plenty of time to deal with those bumps — though the Celtics will have strong bragging rights until the teams meet again on Feb. 25 — perhaps most disturbing was the effect of Shaquille O’Neal in his first real game as a Cav. He had just 10 points on 5-of-11 shooting with 10 rebounds in 29 minutes. Deeper than those vanilla numbers, however, was his inability to deliver at all in the fourth quarter. Three different times James went to him with the score tight and the game on the line and three different times he was unable to come through.

Jay Mariotti, Fanhouse: All it means it that this is a work in progress, that no magic carpet will sweep the Cavs into June and a much-desired Finals matchup with Kobe Bryant and the Lakers. The Celtics didn’t look like a team whose Big Three is a combined 100 years old. Rather, they were energized again by the dynamic point guard, Rajon Rondo, and bolstered by the offense and outside shooting of a widely despised newcomer, Rasheed Wallace. The Cavs couldn’t match up at times with Wallace, Ray Allen and Paul Pierce, and with Garnett looking sturdy and effective in his first game in seven months, the Celtics made a statement that they aren’t dead yet as a contender.

Elliott Teaford, Los Angeles Daily News: Ron Artest had 10 points, five rebounds and four assists in his Lakers debut. At game’s end, Jackson praised Artest for his standout defensive work against Al Thornton, who had eight points on 4-for-11 shooting and nine rebounds in place of injured rookie forward Blake Griffin. “He played shut-down defense very well against their scoring forward, Thornton,” Jackson said. “I thought he looked like he was in the offensive mix most of the time.”