LeBron's Return To Cleveland Was The NBA's Version of HBO's True Detective

Illustration by Ben Johnson @benjayway

Refresh. Refresh. Refresh.

That was my routine on Friday as the entire basketball world awaited Lebron James' announcement of what NBA team he'd be continuing his career with.

I was shocked when he chose to return home to Cleveland. The story was just too good to happen, right?  But it did.

Once the talc powder had settled in Cleveland, I started to retrace the clues (supposed) leading to LeBron's announcement at 12:15pm on Friday. Deadspin was one step ahead, publishing an article on Thursday at 10:49am highlighting the current internet clues pointing to LeBron going home. [My favorite was Mike Miller's Instagram post.]

After reading the article, I was hooked, along with millions of other basketball junkies.  The NBA had their own version of True Detective.

Did Beats' tweet reveal it first? 

But despite all the clues, I was not convinced Lebron was going to Cleveland until Beats Music tweeted this at 4:47pm CTD on Thursday.

There it is, I thought. With recent news The King signed an endorsement deal with Beats, my theory is Beats had the exclusive rights to break the news James was going back to Cleveland as part of the deal.

At that point, I was convinced. King James was going home.