Chris Bosh
He’s tucked away up there in Toronto, but he’s a force to be reckoned with.

Dwyane Wade
I know, he hasn’t done much lately except make commercials with Charles Barkley. But he’s only 26, and a couple years ago he was heroic in bringing a championship to Miami.

Yao Ming
Indeed, he’s injury prone. But he’s a skilled 7-foot-6 center, and that's impressive.

Many stars in the league didn’t get mentions here even though they’re spectacular. The point is to build a team around a player now, and there’s a time element involved. Some of the players are deemed too old to have much of a shelf life left. This is an exercise for younger stars.

So after mulling all of the possibilities, the player who gets the nod as the one above all the rest to build around is:

LeBron James.

Why? First of all, if you built around Paul, Howard, Williams, Bryant or any of the others, you’d still be in the running for a championship. All of them are fantastic players.

But LeBron is 23. He’s only going to get better. He is a man child, mature way beyond his years. He isn’t afraid to have the ball in gut-check moments. There is no one else in the league who has Bryant’s confidence, but LeBron is a close second.

He’s suffering somewhat of a backlash now because he has shot poorly against the Celtics. But so have a lot of other players. The Celtics were among the NBA's top three defensive clubs. You can’t define a player by one playoff series against the team that had the NBA's best record.

Special feature Are you a witness? The highs and lows of King James' career NBCSports.com

Paul and Howard are probably the next best choices. Both will help their teams win lots of games, maybe even titles. But their games don’t have nearly as much room to grow as LeBron’s. He will become a much improved outside shooter. He’ll make better decisions. And he’ll figure out a way to score against anybody.

And right now, among all the contenders here, he is doing the most with the least. His Cavaliers have decent talent. But Paul has Tyson Chandler, David West and Peja Stojakovic. Howard has Hedo Turkoglu and Rashard Lewis. LeBron? There is no one on his roster who could be termed a second star, let alone a third.

In the coming years, if the Cavs get him some star help to make opposing defenses work harder, he’ll be even more spectacular — and Cleveland will then be a dominant power in the East rather than just an interesting team on the rise.

Even though you really couldn’t complain if you had to build around any of the others here, LeBron is the choice.

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