Eric Spoelstra sat alone in his office. Everybody had already gone home for the day. The hallways were dark and silent, save for the distant sound of the janitor’s radio as he cleaned some faraway part of the Heat’s front office.
Ghostly moonlight seeped in through the closed blinds covering the windows, providing only dim illumination. Eric didn’t care. He wanted the darkness of his office to match the true darkness – the darkness of his soul. That was a darkness that no rising sun could ever vanquish, for in his soul, the sun had last set in 2014, never to rise again.
He picked up the framed picture which was on his desk. Nobody had ever seen that it was there, for nobody was ever allowed to sit on the side of the desk where Eric now sat. He was sure that most people assumed it was a picture of his family; indeed, he did have many such pictures adorning his desk. But this picture was different. It was, somehow, more special to him than the pictures of his family.
LeBron James’ face almost seemed to move into a smile as Eric stared longingly at the picture frame. “That’s what I really want for Christmas. You,” he whispered in a choked voice. “I would give it all up, LeBron, all of it, just for us to be reunited as player and coach.”
When the picture of LeBron really did begin to move, Eric was so deep in his sorrow that it didn’t occur to him to be surprised at the apparently supernatural occurrence. And when the picture of LeBron began to speak, his only thought was to listen carefully to the words, not to examine the integrity of his own sanity.
“I’m gone, Spo. I’m gone forever,” A sympathetically-smiling LeBron said from inside the picture. “You have James Johnson now. He can be your new LeBron.”
“I know,” Eric whispered. “But it’s hard to let go of the times we shared.”
“You have to move on,” LeBron said sternly, and now tears glittered in his eyes. “For me and for you. But most importantly, for James Johnson. He deserves a coach that cares about him.”
Suddenly, the picture of LeBron reverted back to its inert state. Eric knew that more words would be wasted. Instead, he gently caressed LeBron’s cheek with his fingertip. Then, for the first and last time, he placed the picture frame into a drawer of his desk, and withdrew a different picture. This new picture, he set in the place where LeBron’s had been.
The room seemed to glow as James Johnson’s smiling face looked into Eric’s. “I have to move on,” Eric whispered, and, unlike the thousands of other times he had commanded himself to do that very thing, he now felt that he was on his way to doing so.