LeBron James can go home again

SACRAMENTO, California—“You can’t go home again,” the novelist Thomas Wolfe wrote 74 years ago, touching off those never-ending personal and emotional tug-of-wars since.

People change and so does the old hometown and to countless souls, the journey back home after all the years gets less desirable.

Not for LeBron James, said my nephew Ryan Peralta Buhain via Facebook from Kissimmee, Florida. “By golly LeBron can go home to Cleveland again and he has.”

“LeBron finished his mission by getting two championship rings in his four-year run with the Miami Heat,” said Ryan who works as an athletic trainer. “At the end of the day, there are more important things than the game of basketball.”

James, in an emotional piece in the web version of Sports Illustrated, explained his return to his home state and the Cavaliers.

“My relationship with Northeast Ohio is bigger than basketball. I didn’t realize that four years ago. I do now,” said James.

His decision to rejoin the Cavaliers left Filipino American coach Erik Spoelstra and the Heat in the lurch and is a bummer to the basketball fanatics among the 160,000 or so Filipinos in the Sunshine State. But it is a boon to basketball fans among the 17,000-strong Pinoy nation in Ohio.

James is going home, but Chris Bosh and Dwyane Wade and Udonis Haslem will stay put in South Beach to pick up the pieces.

Heat president Pat Riley has signed Bosh to a lucrative, five-year deal worth $110 million. Deals were also being worked out for Wade and Haslem.

“No one can fault another person for wanting to return home,” Riley said in an official statement released by the Heat. “The last four years have been an incredible run for South Florida. LeBron is a fantastic leader, athlete, teammate and person, and we are all sorry to see him go.”

Riley then turned his focus on the days ahead for the Heat, who won the NBA crown in 2006, 2012 and 2013.

“Over the last 19 years, since (Heat owner) Micky [Arison] and I teamed together, the Miami Heat has always been a championship organization; we’ve won multiple championships and competed for many others. Micky, Erik [Spoelstra] and I remain committed to doing whatever it takes to win and compete for championships for many years to come.”

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Nueva Ecija Gov. Aurelio “Oyie” Umali speaks in Seattle, Washington Aug. 2 before the 25-year-old association of Cuyapo town natives there.

With Umali around, the blame game at the gathering will be about the Nampicuan-Cuyapo road, a hellish six-kilometer stretch of provincial or national highway near the NE-Tarlac border.

Among the worst of the vital farm-to-market arteries in the country, the road was the subject of a recent television piece by the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism.

I had previously written about the sorry state of the highway, and so had two other Inquirer columnists, Recah Trinidad and Ramon Tulfo.