What LeBron James and others miss about Memphis

If you walk down Beale Street, you can feel the soul of Memphis just about everywhere around you.

Make no mistake, there are other things you can experience if you so choose. No city's downtown area is without its flaws. But what makes this southern stretch of pavement and concrete so unique is those that also make the journey up and down its path. It's the tourist, whose senses are on overload between the blues music playing out of various establishments and the food that is known world over for being part sustinence, part religious experience. It stays with you. Makes you feel alive.

In fairness to the multi-millionaires who have been in the news trashing the city of Memphis, saying the Grizzlies - their NBA team - should move to Nashville, they don't get to see the city the way those that live or even visit for an extended stay do. They're working. They're in the hotel, at the gym or arena, then on the plane to the next stop. If your life in-season is mostly spent in these spaces, and you judge a place on their lodging? Memphis likely is at the bottom of the list.

A very superficial, surface-based, instant gratification-driven list. But such is life in 2026.

Memphis isn't a place you visit. It's a place you experience.

The Grizzlies have made their mark

The Grizzlies, after 25 years, are now part of that experience. An experience that is borne of the blues and forged in the fires of the bright history that is driven by African-American history in the south and in America at large. It is because of that history that to be blue-collar in woven through the fiber of the city. That to understand the value of not just a dollar, but a man, is paramount to understanding how Memphis isn't just a city. It's hallowed ground.

That is an education that you don't get traversing the halls of allegedly lesser-than hotels. You have to go out and let it envelop you. Go see the literal miracle that is St. Jude Children's Hospital. Walk the halls of the National Civil Rights Museum. Tour Stax Museum of Soul Music, Sun Records. Have a conversation with the old couple walking past B.B. King's, or find the solace and peace of mind that only can come when you follow a parallel path to the mighty Mississippi River.

The same river that helped build this nation. Next to a city that helped build this nation in so many ways.

A place worthy of more than words

One of the ways the city is improving itself? The biggest show in town, the Memphis Grizzlies. Grizzlies players understand that. From Ja Morant to Pau Gasol and many more, investment in the city has come in a variety of ways. The men fortunate enough to earn generational wealth playing a child's game while spending at least half their year in the greater Memphis area see the value in the city and its people.

Because they have lived it. They're not just passing through.

NBA head coaches stood up for Memphis. So did national sports media figures. But what is said can only carry you so far. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who lost his life as part of the struggle for equality in America a stone's throw away from FedExForum where the Grizzlies play, showed just how much action must follow words.

It isn't what you say that defines you. It's what you do. And LeBron James, who had shoes made to match the colors of the Lorraine Motel where King was slain and where the National Civil Rights Museum is now located, has shown through both words and deeds where Memphis resides in his line of thinking.

Civil Rights Museum — 1968; Memphis, TN, USA; Sit-in at City Hall led by the Invaders during the 1968 Sanitation Strike. L to r: John Burrell Smith, Charles Cabbage, Charles Harrington, Charles Ballard, Verdell Brooks; Mandatory credit: The Commercial Appeal-USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images | The Commercial Appeal-USA TODAY Network via Imagn Images

A better next generation

Years from now, if you walk down Beale Street, you'll still see FedExForum standing. And it will still be the home of the Memphis Grizzlies.

After decades of fandom, it will be dads and moms, grandmas and grandpas, taking their kids to their first games in the space that has been renovated thanks to newly negotiated agreements with the city and the Grizzlies. The franchise's economic impact - the jobs they create, the growth of the downtown area - will be more evident than ever before. And as the families walk together through the city, the kids will ask questions.

About the Lorraine Motel. And the smells of the food, and the sounds of the blues music. The same spirit that entranced the adults all those years ago will create memories for the next generation to hold on to. To want to be part of beyond that moment. To see all that Memphis is, and to create further wonder about what it was, and what it can be.

A basketball team won't solve poverty. It won't end racial tensions and inequality, or make the government give proportional attention or funds on a city very unlike the rest of the state. But it will be the ties that bind a community, through good times and bad. And it will endure just as long as those who have lived, and loved, in Memphis continue to push forward toward a brighter future.

One that may or may not include better hotels. But almost certainly will not include the ill-advised words of those not fortunate enough to know what they are missing.