The season is over, the summer has begun and there is one question to answer in Cleveland:Does anyone still have LeBron James’s number? No team in NBA history has rallied from a 3–0 deficit to win a playoff series. The Cavaliers didn’t even try. They trailed by 12 points at the end of the first quarter, 19 at the half and 27 at the end of the third in Game 4 on Monday. Timothée Chalamet was wearing an Eastern Conference finals championship T-shirt midway through the fourth quarter. Final score: New York 130, Cleveland 93. Really, it wasn’t that close. “I don’t want to detract from what we’ve done this postseason,” said Cavaliers coach Kenny Atkinson. “Sometimes you have to give the other team credit for playing great basketball.” Swell. An optimist will say the Cavs did make it to the conference finals, the first time a Cleveland team has gone this deep into the postseason since James wore the uniform. They won two Games 7, knocked off the No. 1 seed and held a 22-point lead in Game 1 of the conference finals before gagging it away. Give James Harden a full season and, hey, see what can happen. “There are barriers,” Atkinson said. “We jumped a barrier that we’re stuck on, right?”A realist will assess things more succinctly: The Cavaliers are miles from contention. They won two Games 7 but one was against a Raptors team everyone wanted a piece of, the other against the flawed Pistons who were nearly beaten by Orlando. They blew a 22-point lead in Game 1, then followed it up with three straight losses by double digits. Harden’s Game 7 stat line: 12 points, 2 of 8 from the floor, including 0 of 6 from three. You want to run that back? No. Hell no. A $281 million roster—the most expensive in the NBA—couldn’t win a game in the conference finals. The 2025 Coach of the Year pocketed two timeouts while his team melted down in Game 1, called Harden a good isolation defender and bizarrely claimed three games in that analytically the Cavs had won the expected score of two of them. Harden, the Cavs’ celebrated midseason acquisition, proved (again) to be unreliable in the playoffs.It’s time to be bold, Cleveland. It’s time to call LeBron. It’s time for Donovan Mitchell and LeBron James to team up in Cleveland. | David Richard-Imagn ImagesLuring James won’t be easy. The Cavs are cap strapped. A second apron team. They have nothing to offer James beyond the veteran’s minimum. They are Wyatt Earp at the end of Tombstone, hoping to woo James with unlimited room service. Here’s what they can offer: a fitting end to the NBA’s most decorated career. The Lakers can—and will—offer James more money. The Warriors could make a run at him. Miami could decide to enter the mix. And who knows? James could surprise everyone and decide to retire. Still, it’s Cleveland. The franchise that drafted him. The city that he left, came back and delivered a championship to. In 2010, fans were burning James jerseys when he took his talents to South Beach. In 2018, they wished him well when he left for Los Angeles, celebrating him when he returned. One final return isn’t a good story. It’s cinema. The Cavs need James. His talent. His edge. Think a team with James blows a 22-point lead in the fourth quarter? Think they go out with a whimper in a conference finals elimination game? At 41, James remains a top-25 player. But he’s a top-five leader, with four championship rings to prove it. There are reasons for James to consider a return. Donovan Mitchell is chief among them. Mitchell showed up for Game 4. He scored 31 points. He was 9 of 18 from the floor and 5 of 9 from three-point range. In the first half, as the game started to slip away, Mitchell could be seen in the huddle imploring his team to stay in it. Mitchell wasn’t the reason the Cavs lost. But he owned it. “I’m sorry for the city of Cleveland for it to be like this in a sweep,” Mitchell said. “That’s ass.” He stood by Atkinson (“I ride with Kenny,” Mitchell said), while dismissing questions about the need for improvements (“I have no doubt that this group can get there”). When the subject turned to his future—Mitchell is extension eligible this summer—he was firm on where he wants to be. “I don’t know how else to say it, but I love it here,” said Mitchell. “We have unfinished business. This city deserves a ring, and we’re just gonna keep going.”But Mitchell needs help. The Cavs need to be aggressive. They need to restructure Harden’s contract—he has a $42 million player option for next season—to create more flexibility. And then they need to use it. They should kick the tires on a Evan Mobley–Giannis Antetokounmpo swap. They shouldn’t be afraid to dangle their two tradeable draft picks (in 2031 and ’32) for usable wing defenders. And they should recruit James. The likeliest outcome is James re-ups with the Lakers. He takes a pay cut, keeps his family in Los Angeles, continues playing with his son, Bronny, and closes out his career in purple and gold. His jersey will go up in the rafters. Someday he may get a statue. But maybe—maybe—James wants a more storybook finish. Maybe he wants to finish his career where it started. Maybe he wants to burnish his legacy in the only meaningful way he can, by delivering another title to the city where it all started. Maybe he wants to go out playing for a franchise that reveres him and a crowd that adores him. Maybe he wants one last dance. In Cleveland. More NBA From Sports IllustratedListen to SI’s NBA podcast, Open Floor, below or on Apple and Spotify. Watch the show on SI’s YouTube channel.Add us as a preferred source on GoogleFollow