May 14 (Bloomberg) — The Knicks need LeBron James. He
may not need New York.

James, the two-time defending National Basketball
Association Most Valuable Player, is set to be an
unrestricted free agent on July 1, when teams such as the
Knicks can try to sign the Cleveland Cavaliers’ All-Star.

Yet the lure of the nation’s biggest media and
business hub might not be enough to land James, who has
said he aspires to join friend Warren Buffett as a
billionaire. The Knicks, unlike baseball’s New York
Yankees, can’t lure him by paying more than other teams
because of the NBA salary cap. He may not need the glitz
that New York affords: James is already the league’s top
endorser while playing in Cleveland.

“He’s only going to get bigger and better, whether he
stays in Cleveland or goes to a different city,” said Doug
Shabelman, president of Evanston, Illinois-based Burns
Entertainment & Sports Marketing. “With the global economy
and the global reach of the Internet and television, the
difference isn’t as pronounced as it used to be.”

James is living a hometown dream. He went to St.
Vincent-St. Mary High School in Akron, Ohio, about a 40-
mile drive from Cleveland, and was drafted by the Cavaliers
as the first pick in 2003.

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Warren Buffett knows how to lay down the law with Wall Street, especially scandal-ridden investment banks like Goldman Sachs (GS). “If you lose money for the firm by bad decisions, I will be very understanding,” he said. “If you lose reputation for the firm I will be ruthless.”

Except that the firm whose rep the “Oracle of Omaha” was determined to save isn’t Goldman. That was Buffett in 1991 speaking to employees of Salomon Brothers, where he was the interim chairman and which he controlled as its largest shareholder. The legendary investor had rescued the securities firm after it was caught trying to rig bids for U.S. Treasury notes. In so doing, he’d worked miracles in persuading government officials not to throw the book at Salomon, largely by firing John Gutfreund and John Meriwether, the revered “masters of the universe” who ran the firm.

Nearly 30 years later, Buffett appears to have changed his tune. As one of the largest shareholders in Goldman, he is loudly defending the company against federal allegations that the company defrauded investors in the now-infamous Abacus synthetic CDO. Buffett has also made the media rounds since the SEC announced its lawsuit to throw his support behind Goldman chief vampire squid Lloyd Blankfein.

“I don’t have a problem with the Abacus transaction at all,” he told shareholders last weekend in attendance at the annual meeting of his Berkshire Hathaway (BRK), adding that investors in the deal should’ve done their homework.

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