NBA basketball player LeBron James of the U.S. team Cleveland Cavaliers smiles during a promotional event in Hong Kong July 23, 2014.
NBA basketball player LeBron James of the U.S. team Cleveland Cavaliers smiles during a promotional event in Hong Kong July 23, 2014. REUTERS

Let us play a game of what if.

A CNN interview that is scheduled to broadcast on Friday will show that Cleveland Cavaliers returnee LeBron James would have remained with the Miami Heat if they had captured the championship in the previous season.

In his first candid one-on-one since he announced his return to the Cleveland Cavaliers, James pointed out that a third consecutive championship would have likely kept him in Miami, at least in the short term. Here's a detailed explanation by James:

The two-time NBA champion sat down for an interview revealing his plans for the upcoming season and his reasons for coming back to the franchise that originally drafted him, the Cavaliers. The juiciest part is his revelation that he would have made a run for a four-peat, that his former team had captured the Larry O'Brien trophy.

"It's a greater chance (to return to Miami), for sure, I mean, it would be hard to leave back-to-back-to-back championships and try to go for four. But, obviously, you really can't live and think of what may have happened. For me, I've always been a person kind of live in the moment," James said in an excerpt of the interview.

While this new development can just venture into what might have been, it can no longer seethe the emotions of the Heat, his latest spurned franchise. Some Heat fans took to social media their anger of James' departure with burning jerseys and erasing the former MVP's face in the some of the Big Three's poster. Nevertheless, it is widely perceived that James left the Heat organization on good terms.

James also revealed to CNN's Rachel Nichols the reasons why he chose to go back to Ohio and redeem his legacy there, his meeting with Cavs owner Dan Gilbert, his secret to reducing a lot of weight during the off-season and the challenge of bringing a championship to Cleveland.

King James and the Cavaliers will be taking his talents back to South Beach on Christmas Day and the anticipation is expected to go through the roof.