I Timothy 6:6-10

6 Now there is great gain in godliness with contentment, 7 for we brought nothing into the world, and we cannot take anything out of the world. 8 But if we have food and clothing, with these we will be content. 9 But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. 10 For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils. It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs.

I don’t know if any of you are following the NBA Free Agency period. If you aren’t, let me just summarize that there are about 8-10 players who will most likely sign  5-6 year contracts for  $100-$120 million dollars in the next week or so.  Obviously I’ve been paying attention. I admit there is something about these type of deals that kind of fascinate me. Now I wouldn’t say I “Love” money or have a “desire to be rich”. If anything I need to develop a healthier “respect” of money (Don Miller has some good commentary on this).  But for some reason, these words in the verse about contentment verses desire to be rich got me thinking about the NBA. So rather than talk about myself, let’s talk about Lebron James for a minute. I hear he’s blowing up search engines.

Now here’s the way the NBA works; it rewards players who stay with their current team by allowing that team to pay them almost $20 million dollars more with an extra year than an outside team can offer. So, if Lebron “desires” more $$$, than it appears staying with his current team, the Cleveland Cavaliers, is what he’ll pick. However, if he’s not “content” being on a team that can’t win a world championship, than he can take less money to play for a different team that he thinks has a better shot at winning it all.

The other option is he could take less money and stay with his home team so they can afford to sign other top players. Either way, it’s good drama that the sporting world is captivated by  (which I guess includes me too). So I’m not sure who’s more stirred up, the spectator or the spectacle, by  this issue of “contentment” or the “desire to be rich”. Back to myself, I think I need to keep working on the “contentment” part.

But for the sake of polling, what do you think? Should Lebron James stay or should he go?