Naturally, the wounds healed in time. After getting over the championship hump in Miami—not six … not seven, but two in as many seasons (which still isn’t bad)—James came home in the 2014 off-season, breaking the news through a first-person essay in Sports Illustrated this time.

He then went on to lead the Cavaliers to four straight appearances in the NBA Finals, rallying them to a title over the nine-loss Golden State Warriors in 2016. That series, in which the Warriors famously blew a 3–1 series lead , doesn’t just rank among the greatest upsets in sports, it broke Cleveland’s 52-year championship curse . So when after months of speculation James opted out of his Cavs contract in June and signed with the Lakers in July (news he dramatically understated via a one-sentence press release ), there was some jersey burning, sure. But there was also something else—empathy. James had accomplished his mission, after all.

Read: LeBron James, the Lakers, and a Cleveland legacy beyond basketball

Unsurprisingly, the Cavaliers haven’t been the same since he left. After starting 0–6, the team dismissed Tyronn Lue, the shrewd former player turned coach who stepped in midway through the 2016 season and guided the Cavs to their only title. (James was quick to thank him for his service after news of the coach’s dismissal broke .) Larry Drew, the longtime assistant who was tapped to replace Lue, held out on assuming the title of interim head coach until he got a pay raise—leverage that underscores the desperate state of the Cavs in the second post-LeBron age. On Tuesday, the team announced plans to part ways with the mercurial small forward J. R. Smith and work with his reps to trade him out of town. All the while, the All-Star forward Kevin Love, once the Robin to James’s Batman, has been sidelined with injuries to his hand and toe.

Contrast that with the situation in Los Angeles. After the Lakers lost five of their first seven games by an average of 5.4 points, Angelenos began growing restless, never mind that the team would lose the guards Rajon Rondo and Brandon Ingram to suspensions for their starring roles in an on-court fight during an October 20 home game against the Houston Rockets . Chief among L.A.’s frustrated supporters was the Lakers president, Magic Johnson—who’d haul the second-year head coach, Luke Walton, behind closed doors and dress him down for the team’s slow start. But since Magic’s pep talk, the Lakers got Rondo and Ingram back and added the veteran center Tyson Chandler , a much-needed defensive presence. They’ve won seven of their past nine games, earning their last victory by a 16-point margin on the road last Sunday against the Miami Heat—James’s other big homecoming this month.