King James had the world centered on him last night as he made his decision to kill Eastern League Basketball go to the Heat (I'm actually a Nets fan and if he wasn't going there, I wanted him to stay in Cleveland). However this once again shows the main difference between baseball and basketball as sports (I mean besides the obvious ones including action, time management, etc). The Heat have been able to really re-shape their team by spending money, its not as drastic as when the Celtics did it (since they were going bottom of the league to top) but its the same process. Basketball is a sport, since its only 5 on the court at the time, where one player really can make that big of a difference.
I was trying to think through baseball's history and I couldn't think of a player that would be able to pull off what James did last night. The reason is that there is no one player through the history of baseball that can take a bad team and make them into a winner. The most recent example of one team spending a lot of money and then getting the championship, would be the Yankees. However even though they got CC, AJ and Tex in one offseason, they already had Arod, Jeter, Mariano, etc. This is what makes baseball unique. One can spend money and buy the best players, and make significant improvements, but there are so many roles that need to be filled, there is no one player that really can flip an entire franchise.
One thing about basketball free agency that has always impressed me though is the speed of it (aided by the cap), how its finished so quick after it starts. After watching many baseball offseasons, a quicker baseball offseason would be a welcome change of pace (but then us bloggers would have nothing to write about, so I guess I'm ok with our free agency going on forever).
