Cavaliers need to give up dream of 2014 reunion with LeBron James

Mike Brown is returning to Cleveland, but the odds of LeBron James joining him aren't great. (Getty Images)

 From the moment Mike Brown marches back into the Cleveland Cavaliers, ownership needs to empower him to tell everyone the truth: LeBron James is gone and he's never returning to the franchise.
No more tanking for draft picks. No more empty free-agent classes. No more false promises and mirages. No more illusions of chasing James in the summer of 2014, only to compromise themselves over and over in the conceptual pursuit of him.
The Cavaliers have a franchise player, Kyrie Irving, and here's the problem today: No one cares his thoughts on the next coach, nor how the hiring affects him. Every day Brown's ever spent on the job as Cavaliers coach, every choice and action was colored with how LeBron James would react, how he'd respond.
For the good of this franchise, Brown doesn't need to be set up again as the fall guy for James wanting to play elsewhere. Three years later, Brown returns to coach the Cavaliers and somehow they're all still trying to get LeBron James to love them.
"The way Mike had to bend for LeBron weakened him as a leader," one former Cavaliers staffer told Yahoo! Sports. "They'd be crazy to put him through that again. It's pointless."