Reports: LeBron James signs two-year contract with Cleveland Cavaliers

LeBron James was outstanding in the NBA finals but could not lead his team to the championship. Photograph: Kevin C Cox/Getty Images

LeBron James will saddle up again for the Cleveland Cavaliers after agreeing a two-year contract with the team, according to ESPN. The deal is understood to be worth up to $46.9m, with the second year a player option.

James had not talked to any other teams during free agency, and was never expected to leave his hometown team. Rather, any negotiations on James’s part are to maintain flexible contracts to take advantage of rising salary caps.

The move reaffirms James’s target of winning an NBA championship with the Cavaliers. He came agonizingly close last month, as the Cavs went down 4-2 to the Golden State Warriors in the NBA finals. The last two times James was a free agent he moved teams – from the Cavaliers to Miami Heat in 2010 before a return to Cleveland in 2014.

Another of the Cavaliers’ stars, Kevin Love, says his new five-year, $113.2m contract with the team is “inked and official”. Love said he had met with James before free agency to discuss the team’s future, with forward Tristan Thompson also expected to complete a deal in the coming days.
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“I expressed this to LeBron and he’d been through it a couple of times now — I can actually go wherever I want and pick the team I want to play for,” Love said on Thursday.

“But every time I went through the different scenarios I always came out at the same place, and that was to be in Cleveland and try to win championships. I would be able to really help this team win and going forward make a very big impact on this team and on this city, trying to bring a championship or championships.”

Warriors and Cavaliers post highest NBA finals ratings since Jordan's 1998 finale

The 2015 NBA finals saw the Golden State Warriors clinch their first title in 40 years – and the series was officially confirmed as the highest rated on TV since 1998, when the Bulls triumphed in Michael Jordan’s final season with Chicago.

Nearly 20m people, on average, watched the Warriors-Cavaliers series on ABC, the highest viewership in 17 years, when 29m tuned in to watch Jordan’s Bulls beat the Utah Jazz in dramatic style.

Cleveland’s LeBron James drives on the Warriors’ Stephen Curry during Tuesday’s Game 6. Photograph: Ken Blaze/USA Today Sports

Tuesday night’s game, when Golden State won 105-97 in Cleveland to seal a four-games-to-two series victory, was the most watched Game 6 in ABC’s history, scoring 23.2m viewers, according to Nielsen.

The previous best in the post-Jordan era came in 2001, when the Shaquille O’Neal-led LA Lakers defeated the Philadelphia 76ers four games to one, and 18.9m viewers watched. Sunday’s Game 6 at the Quicken Loans Arena was also the most watched finals game since 2013, when LeBron James notched 37 points in Game 7 against the Spurs to give Miami their second straight championship.

The NBA has failed to replicate the TV ratings it enjoyed in the 1990s, a run that spiked with Bulls-Suns in 1993 and peaked with Jordan’s Chicago finale in 1998. In that series, broadcast on NBC, the Bulls beat the Jazz in six games. Jordan hit a 20ft jumper to give Chicago an 87-86 lead with seconds remaining, and then John Stockton missed a three-pointer to give the Bulls the title. The game-winner, Jordan’s final shot in a Bulls uniform, is widely acknowledged as one of the most memorable plays in NBA history.

Television ratings plunged after Jordan retired. Some fans blame the 1998-99 lockout, which wiped out 32 games of the following season and caused many viewers to switch off. The 1999 Knicks-Spurs series did not rate well on TV.

This season’s finals was also the best rated since it moved to ABC in 2003 – and the closest the NBA has come to the huge audiences it enjoyed in the 1980s and 90s.