No matter how great your athletic skills, your legacy is undermined when, as player of a team sport, you repeatedly abandon your team in search of some sweeter opportunity elsewhere.

This will be the fifth time in his NBA career that LeBron has started afresh with a new team. By my measure, that’s four times too many. No matter how many points he scores, this pattern of abandonment lessens the joy I can take in his excellence.

The only time I cheered him on, and felt happy in his success was when LeBron returned to his home town Cleveland, and won a title. But, alas, even that was just a passing interlude in a career that has found him wandering for even longer than Odysseus—who at least came home after 20 years. Next year will be LeBron’s 24th season, and it will be marked by one more new start in a new city.