All right, chaps, hang on to your Knickerbockers

New York will fantasize, Cleveland will fume. Manhattan will dream, Mentor will nightmare. Broadway will shimmer, Bay Village will shun. Long Island will smile, Lakewood will sneer.

The Cavs hit the road to face the Knicks Tuesday.

Boy, is that a mundane way to put it.

LeBron James leads the Cleveland Cavaliers into New York Tuesday night, where the Knicks are mobilizing an all-out campaign to bring the NBA's best player to the Basketball Capital of the World.

There, that's more like it.

Over the past few days I've received my fair share of IMs and texts about LeBron leaving Cleveland for New York when he can become a free agent in 2010. It's at least the hottest sports speculation story this century. The ingredients are there. Small market vs. big market. Tradition-rich franchise vs. fledgling power. All the classic David vs. Goliath scenarios are in play, and at stake is a player who will almost certainly be among the top 10 in history when all is said and done. Oh, and that player happens to have strong ties to David.

As I attempted to detail late last June, it's downright silly to argue what LeBron will do when he can opt out of his current contract in 20 months. That hasn't really changed, nor have the circumstances surrounding the situation. The Cavs are still a contender, and the Knicks are still a good distance from being truly competitive.

In fact, there are so few definitive statements surrounding this situation that any discussion about it will inevitably become reckless guesswork. The sports media are sure to spend a good chunk of time on that, so I won't give you anything but facts from here on out. That's right, nothing but the 100 percent truth about the situation, from the Cavs' standpoint, the Knicks' standpoint, LeBron's standpoint, and my own as a hardcore Cleveland fan.

Don't believe me? Try this on for size.

I would love to see LeBron in a Knicks jersey

Maybe it was the similar color schemes. Maybe it was that championship chastity belt Michael Jordan. Whatever the reason, ever since I started rooting for the Cavs in the mid-'90s, I've never rooted against the Knicks.

I only "hate" two things in all of sports: the Steelers and Art Modell. But that doesn't mean I don't find it easy to root against bigger markets. Whenever the Red Sox lose, my mood improves. Whenever the Lakers get pushed around by a more physical team, I crack a smile. For some reason, I never felt that way about the Knicks. Sure, I've laughed my ass off at them the last several years...right beside Knicks fans themselves. When ESPN.com split its "most overpaid NBA players" list into four categories, and two of them were "Knicks" and "Former Knicks", how could you not be rolling in the aisles?

Nobody was laughing, however, when they were winning. Like when the 1969-70 Knicks had their entire starting five's jerseys reach the rafters. Or when Patrick Ewing led the New York Skyscrapers in the early '90s. Or when Allan Houston, Charlie Ward, Latrell Sprewell, Marcus Camby and Grandma-ma restored the Knicks as a conference threat around the turn of the century. I loved watching that 1999-2000 team, and I found myself pulling for them many times, too.

Just as fans connect themselves to athletes, I've always found a kinship with LeBron. No, I'm never gonna be as popular or as talented athletically or make as much money as he does. But we both trumpet Cleveland and we both have brash confidence in our potential. I can't dunk from the foul line or take any human being I choose off the dribble, but you bet your ass I'm 10 times the writer and broadcaster that you are.

To reach his own potential, LeBron may very well have to don a Knicks jersey for a large portion of his career. I understand that. Hell, I didn't see that many opportunities where I grew up or went to college, so I bolted for Los Angeles. LeBron has long expressed his love for New York, and I know what he means. I don't necessarily want to live there, because I prefer the laid-back lifestyle of southern California to the hustle-and-bustle of the Big Apple. But every time I visit New York, I love it. There's so much atmosphere, so much vibrancy, so much going on. New York is a basketball mecca, and even a period of prolonged pointlessness by the Knicks hasn't tarnished that reputation. It's the place where the NBA was founded, where Madison Square Garden still rules, where the game gives hope to the underprivileged, where point guards are as legendary as Greek myths. I've heard many people say that hip-hop is the voice of New York. If that's the case, then basketball is definitely its soul.

So much so that LeBron might land there as a free agent. Do I want that? Do I want LeBron to play for anyone else in his career? FUCK NO FUCK NO FUCK NO. But I'm gonna be honest. If I have to watch him leave for someone else, I'd rather have it be the Knicks. Point blank.

Which brings me to my next fact.

This is a two-horse race

If one thing's cleared up over the past few months, it's the players in the LeBron sweepstakes. New Jersey's move to Brooklyn has been delayed at least a year, and while teams like Detroit and Portland will surely make a push, there's no reason to think LeBron will make a lateral move in terms of market potential.

That leaves two alarmingly viable options for the summer of 2010: Cleveland and New York.

The Knicks dumped Jamal Crawford and Zach Randolph last Friday for one reason: to make room for LeBron's free agency. It's borderline insulting to think otherwise. It's also kind of ironic, since Crawford is a player the Cavs have quietly been trying to pair with LeBron for years. In any case, that's $27 million off the books for the summer of 2010, which is a handy number to try and counteract Cleveland's league-legislated ability to pay LeBron almost $32 million more overall than any other team.

Enough money babble. Here's a reality: the Knicks are now the franchise best suited to lure LeBron away from Cleveland. They hired Mike D'Antoni, whose style appeals to LeBron's capabilities. They shed bad contracts, which appeals to LeBron's need for running mates. And they play in New York, which (obviously) appeals to LeBron's desire to become a global icon.

Go back to that earlier sentence for a minute. "The Knicks are now the franchise best suited to lure LeBron away from Cleveland." The Knicks could always boast the better locale, but many people scoffed at the notion they'd have the savoir-faire to open up the cap space to bring him in. Apparently, those people weren't paying attention when Donnie Walsh built the Indiana Pacers into a decade-long winner. Since being hired by the Knicks last June, Walsh has fired Isiah Thomas, hired D'Antoni and dealt away those wretched Randolph and Crawford contracts. That's not to say he's the NBA's greatest bureaucrat, but in a league where you can win 24 games one year and 82 the next, it was foolish to think the Knicks wouldn't be able to put together an enticing package for LeBron, and Walsh's maneuvers have done just that.

There's one problem, though. More like a question, really: why should LeBron leave the Cavs?

This is no longer the bitter hiss or rallying cry of Cavs fans. It's the God's honest truth. At this very moment, the Cavs are 11-3, having just hammered the Knicks by 18 points, and our only three losses were at Boston, at New Orleans and at Detroit. Of course, winning a championship means learning to win those kinds of games on the road, but the roster isn't quite complete and the organization has shown every commitment to giving LeBron what he needs. He's starring for the franchise near where he grew up, which is in excellent position to compete for titles the next few years. If he decides to leave, is there anywhere to go but down?

In one particular circumstance, yes.

If LeBron wins a title before 2010, he has my blessing

I hope I speak for Cleveland fans all over. Our failures are canonical, so there's no need to run through them again, but if LeBron can restore glory to sports' most tortured city, then he has my blessing to do whatever he wants. Even if you ignore Cleveland's futility, he's been up against it since day one.

Everyone loves to compare LeBron James with Michael Jordan, and that's ludicrous on a number of levels. The only things they have in common are leadership, extraordinary talent and the number 23. They aren't the same type of player, and that extends well beyond the basketball court. Sure, Jordan came in with a fair amount of hype, but nobody remembers that he was NCAA Player of the Year the season before he went pro. And Michael Jordan never had a Michael Jordan that everyone held him against. All LeBron did was win high school championships in a decidedly shitty basketball state, and his physical attributes still earned him the title of Messiah. Right there is the most significant difference between them: Jordan spent his life being told he couldn't, and LeBron spent his life being told he could.

I don't believe for a second that LeBron is anywhere close to taking Jordan's title as greatest basketball player of all time. But if he wins a championship, the conversation will rightfully begin, because there's no denying it's much harder to win when everybody expects you to.

It's also harder when you don't have as much talent around you. Chris Broussard wrote a piece about the LeBron/Knicks situation earlier today, which mixed tinges of LeBron's legacy. One of the points he makes is that Jordan's supporting cast, even with Scottie Pippen, was worse than every other dynasty in NBA history, which is hard to argue. And if that case is hard to argue, then LeBron's is damn near impossible, which is something else Broussard recognizes.

When the Cavs reached the finals two years ago, Tim Legler said that LeBron was "changing the paradigm of a champion" in the NBA, i.e. he was evolving the Jordan criteria that you need two superstars to win a title, which itself advanced the Lakers/Celtics model of three or more superstars. It may not have panned out, but it was an intriguing supposition nonetheless, and it was predicated on the idea that LeBron's supporting cast was awful. Ask yourself, then, what happens if he scales the mountain not only in Cleveland...but for the lowly Knicks as well?

If LeBron wins a championship by overcoming not just the hype but also the relative lack of help, he's done all I can ask. Not only will he have swam against the undertow of Cleveland history, but NBA history as well. At that point, he can do what he wants. And if he rescues ANOTHER franchise from destitution, he's staking even more basketball territory.

Until he does it once, however, I'm staying level. Which means I'm not listening to the pundits.

Stephen A. Smith is an idiot

I can't count the number of times I've heard him dry heave bullshit about this whole situation. All he ever does is scream blanket statements about how Akron isn't Cleveland and how he's spoken to inside sources and how LeBron's already decided to leave. C'mon, man. We all saw the interview you did for ESPN on Tuesday. After months and months of yelling and yelling, you pretty much ducked the situation. You asked questions we already knew the answers to, and you postured like a hypocrite. "What do you say to the people who already assume you want to leave Cleveland?" Please! Like you're not one of the people who have been saying that! I have no problem confronting the fact that LeBron could depart Cleveland in the summer of 2010, so this isn't me whining about the people who bring up the issue. This is me calling you out for being an irresponsible wimp. Straight up.

Sadly, however, Stephen A. is not the only one who's spreading biased nonsense. As much as I love him, Broussard has been decidedly pro-Cleveland in his writing, as have Dan Labbe other members of the Cleveland media, and the New York media have been just as bad.

That's not really an indictment of people close to either side, though. It's an indictment of anyone who tries to tell you anything definitive before LeBron actually files for free agency. That's what I've been saying for five months, and so far, ESPN's Marc Stein is the only one who's joined me without letting bias creep into the picture. It's a huge story, no doubt about it, and because it's a huge story, a huge amount of people will discuss it between now and July 1, 2010. And rightfully so, because basketball's flagship franchise has a good chance of signing the game's best player.

So Knicks nation, I wish you luck, and I've got nothing but love for you.

But right now, I love kicking your ass.