Lebron James not gonna play in Europe if the money’s right

The Cleveland Cavaliers now have more than the New York Knicks and LA Lakers to worry about when LeBron James becomes a free agent after the 2009-2010 season—they’ve also got to be concerned with CSKA Moscow and Maccabi Tel Aviv.

LeBron’s PR flaks have been spreading the word that he’d be willing to play in Europe—at least for a year or two—assuming that the checks had enough “zeros” on the end. The number that LeBron’s people have been touting is a cool $50 million per year. The plan would be for the NBA superstar to ball in Europe for a couple of years “to help popularize the game overseas” before returning to the US. The nine figures that he’d bank would presumably have nothing to do with his decision.

On the surface, the idea of one of the NBA’s top stars to leave for Europe while in his prime seems outlandish. While the Euro-leagues have definitely raised their level of talent in recent years, they’re still “pound for pound” significantly below the NBA’s level of competition. There are also plenty of things that LeBron still wants to accomplish in the NBA, not the least of which would be winning a NBA title. There’s very little precedent for such a big name taking his game to Europe—while other NBA players have signed with foreign teams they’re typically of the level of recent Euro-signees Josh Childress and Carlos Arroyo.

Upon deeper analysis, however, the idea starts to look more realistic. The first important consideration concerns something that the NBA has that Europe lacks—a salary cap. The 2008-2009 NBA salary cap is $58 million, meaning that if a team wanted to pay LeBron $50 million they’d have to recruit random guys from the local YMCA to fill out the roster. In other words, its possible in theory but the team would be so competitively disadvantaged as to make it unattractive for even the most self absorbed and dominant superstar. In Europe, however, they can pay LeBron whatever he wants and pay his potential Euro-teammates whatever they want.

There’s also a “perfect storm” of other factors that make the “LeBron to Europe for $50 mil+” scenario more realistic. LeBron is still very young relative to his development as an NBA pro, meaning he could take a couple of years “off” to play in Europe. Additionally, the Euro and other world currencies are historically strong compared to the US dollar making the huge salary more of a “bargain” to the team that signs him. There’s also some recent precedent for European teams overpaying for US talent—the aforementioned CSKA Moscow recently signed Josh Childress to a three year deal paying him $30 million. Childress is a decent enough player, but if he’s pulling down $10 million a year the notion of paying arguably the biggest superstar in the game $50 a year doesn’t seem that outlandish.