LeBron James: I'm coming back to Cleveland (OFFICIAL)

"After 45 years, I think I’ve been around at least 15 transcendent players that have walked out the door -- either left the team, retired, got traded, went somewhere else -- and you move on," the 69-year-old Heat president said in a measured but firm tone. "We were shocked, but we recovered."

"There wasn't anything in that meeting that told me that wasn't going to happen," Riley said of the anticipated return by James. "I've moved on quickly from that, 'We are going to build another championship team and that's it.'

''I went into it with the thought and the notion that he was coming back," Riley said, "and I was selling that to players, I believed that firmly, so I was selling that to players. And that's the only way I went into it. I let him know that. He never said to me, 'No, don't do that.' ''

"I don't think I was misled. But I don't think I was encouraged either. That's business."

Instead, there was silence.

"I sent him a lot of emails and texts," Riley said. "I was communicating a lot with him. No response."

“Could care less where he goes, man.” When I express incredulity he puts one hand on his heart, and the other hand shoots skyward like a flare. “Honest to God! I just know wherever he ends up, I’ll cross that team off my list.” And with that he finishes the last bit of his lunch and hurries back to the gym. There are children to teach, and Williams is a loyal helper.

“Bron had me blinded man. He wins you over completely. He makes you feel like you’re his best friend. He’ll party with you, train with you, dance on the sideline with you… Look, growing up I was obsessed with the Thundercats. Bron found out and he had this artist make me a painting where it was me playing basketball, but I looked like Panthro. He would call me Panthro all the time, and I called him Lion-O. We used to joke about how Dwight (Howard, then their nemesis with the Orlando Magic) was Mumm-Ra.” I ask Williams where that painting is now, and he crumbles his napkin and tosses it over his shoulder, then shrugs. “I couldn’t get Bron to pick up my calls for a week after ‘The Decision,’ so finally I just sent him a text, I just said, Lion-O would never leave Panthro out in the cold. Two days later I get a text back that says I’m a basketball player and a businessman, not a Thundercat. But that’s how he is… That’s who he is. He makes you feel like a million bucks and then steps over you like a bad penny on his way out the door.”

“A man lets you know who he is by how he treats others. D. Wade, Chris, Heat fans, they saw how Bron did me and the Cavs, so they shouldn’t expect no sympathy from no one. You invite a vampire into your house, you gonna get bit. Simple as that.”

“I couldn’t get Bron to pick up my calls for a week after ‘The Decision,’ so finally I just sent him a text, I just said, Lion-O would never leave Panthro out in the cold.