LeBron deserves great teammates more than once per year

ARLINGTON, Texas -- Once a year we get to see it. But only once a year. It's not enough to sustain me, but it'll have to do, because this is all there is. It's the NBA All-Star Game, and this is what it looks like when LeBron James plays with great teammates.

LeBron (23) will never have this much talent on his team, but one superstar is a real possibility. (AP)

This is what I want to see on a regular basis, only I can't, because James plays for the Cleveland Cavaliers -- and Cleveland has one of the worst supporting casts in the NBA. If you doubt the last dozen words of that sentence, see for yourself. It isn't hard. Mentally remove the best player from every team in the league, and then study what's left. On almost any roster you can name, players 2-12 will be better than players 2-12 on Cleveland's roster. That's a fact.

Cleveland has a 43-11 record, best in the NBA by two full games. That's also a fact. And it's a testament to the talent of James, the NBA's most complete player since Michael Jordan and, before him, Oscar Robertson.

That's another fact.

Once a year, in this showcase, we get to see what it would look like for James to play with another great player. He plays with a whole roster of great players, which skews things a little bit. On Sunday he had Dwyane Wade at the point and Joe Johnson on the wing and Kevin Garnett and Dwight Howard in the paint. That's absurd, and it's never going to happen in Cleveland or any other NBA city. The salary cap won't allow it. But the salary cap would allow for James to play with another great player, as the salary cap has allowed in the past with Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O'Neal on the Lakers.

True, O'Neal is James' teammate in Cleveland -- but it's not the same O'Neal. The Shaq who played with Kobe was good for 28 points and 13 rebounds per game. This one is averaging 11.7 points and 6.8 rebounds. This is half-a-Shaq.

LeBron deserves better, but he has always deserved better, sort of like Michael Jordan deserved better than the garbage roster he was thrust onto when the Bulls drafted him in 1984. Eventually Jordan got Scottie Pippen, and you know the rest.

LeBron wants more than what he has in Cleveland. He practically said so after the game Sunday night.

"You want to play with guys that are great and want to win and want to compete at a high level every night," he said. "We'll see."

On Sunday, we saw. I asked Wade what it's like to play with LeBron once a year, and Wade started smiling. Maybe he was thinking of that alley-oop he threw to James, a lob that James caught in mid-spin, finishing the play with a reverse dunk. Moments later, James did the throwing and Wade did the dunking. No spin. All power.

"Yeah, you see the connection we both have," he said, nodding. "Especially going to the basket, lobs, finding each other. I get the opportunity to be his teammate for one day, and I'm going to enjoy it. He makes the game easy for all his teammates. You see that in Cleveland."

No question about that. As I've noted, Cleveland has the best record in the NBA. Lots of you will tell me the Cavaliers' record proves that they have more talent than I'm giving them credit for -- that there's no way the worst supporting cast in the NBA could produce the best record in the NBA. If that's your position, there are two problems with that:

One, LeBron is that good. The last player to average 30 points, eight assists and seven rebounds for an entire season was Jordan in 1989. Before that, it was Oscar Robertson in 1966. James is on the verge of doing it this season, averaging 29.9 ppg, 8.3 assists and 7.1 rebounds.

Two, LeBron's supporting cast is that bad. This weekend in Dallas, there were 28 All-Stars. There were another 18 future stars in the NBA Rookie-Sophomore Challenge. There were six players in the 3-Point Shootout, five in the Slam Dunk Contest and four in the Skills test. That's a total of 61 players. Guess how many of them came from Cleveland? Other than LeBron, I mean.

Zero.

I win.

So does LeBron James, 43 times in 54 games so far. And so did the East on Sunday night, beating the West 141-139 thanks to Wade and James, who combined for 53 points, 17 assists, 11 rebounds and nine steals. Wade was named MVP -- he had 28 points and 11 assists -- but he understands why.

"He was one of the reasons why I sit up here with the MVP award," Wade said of James, "finding me, getting my rhythm. And I got a lot of assists from him. It's great playing with LB, man, and it always will be."

You know, of course, that the two of them could play again. Permanently. And I don't mean the 2012 Summer Olympics, though in 2012 they are sure to reprise their roles of Batman and Robin -- or Batman and Batman -- during the United States' gold-medal run of 2008. I'm talking about the 2010-11 season, when one or both of them could be playing for a new team. For years, as the potential disaster of losing LeBron has loomed for the Cavaliers, I've fought for Cleveland, and for Ohio. We can't lose LeBron. He's ours. That's been my position.

Now, my position is this: I want to see LeBron play with a great teammate (and sorry, Mo Williams, but neither you nor half-a-Shaq count). I want to see that because I want LeBron to fulfill his destiny as the greatest player in NBA history, and he can only do that with championship rings, and he can only do that with better talent around him. Maybe he and Wade can go somewhere together, swallow some pride and save their next team some money and play together knowing damn well that a series of NBA rings would lead to more millions in endorsements and other opportunities than whatever they'd lose in salary.

Maybe it's not LeBron and Wade. There are plenty of other great players who will become free agents this offseason, including Chris Bosh, whom LeBron found with a bounce pass through traffic. If LeBron makes that pass in Cleveland, it hits one of Zydrunas Ilgauskas' wooden legs and bounces out of bounds. Bosh? He caught it and stuffed it.

Amar'e Stoudemire could be headed to Cleveland as soon as this week. That's the rumor, though James noted that "it's all speculation. ... Other than that, everything else is just talk."

Hey, it's the kind of talk I want to hear. And it's the kind of vision I want to see: LeBron James, who sees the court like a taller Steve Nash, playing with a great teammate every night. If James averages 8.3 assists with his current crop of teammates, he'd be in the 10-plus range with a stud like Stoudemire. Or with Wade or Bosh.

I know, I know. It's a fantasy. But guess what? I'm not the only one having it.

"Yeah, we can dream, can't we?" Wade said about playing permanently with James. "I dream."