I have been following Lebron pretty closely since before he was drafted, and he has always been fairly menschlich by the standards of the hand he’s been dealt. I don’t imagine that he’s a legitimate tzaddik but when you compare him to people of his celebrity who have no positive family influences (he basically acted as his mother’s father for at least a while) and no authority figures, that he is not a total mush-ches (that’s a fun word to transliterate) is a miracle.
I also think people are giving him too much credit for this decision and letter. I am jubilant as a Cleveland fan because he is the best player in the NBA by head and shoulders, but he wrote the letter together with an experienced columnist and obviously calculated how to express his decision in the way that would most benefit his image. Even still, as Vonnegut said, “you are who you pretend to be.”