Starlord

He wasn't being a mercenary when he returned to Cleveland. That was him keeping the faith with his hometowns fans. 
 
And as a general aside, we as fans need to stop demonizing athletes for exercising their right to change employers. I've had jobs that I loved but would have left for an offer of double my salary and benefits in a heartbeat. When you can only work in your best profession for a few years, you have to maximize what you can get.
 
NBA careers last 3-4 years on average and sports is actually the closest thing we have to Meritocracy.  In most jobs if you're popular, competent and a hard worker, you have job security.  In sports if they find someone better than you, you're out and we make the off-field stuff work with the new guy.
 
We subconsciously envy and resent the bigger stars when they apply the same criteria to the team and use the demand for their services to move to what they feel is a better situation. If I had the skills to make Fortune 500 companies engage in a bidding war for me, then of course I'm gonna go with the best offer. But that's something that reserved for elite talents in their fields.

It's only a model...

I'm grateful to be old enough that there was no Internet when I was young(er) and stupid(er) where I could thoughtlessly post every insensitive and stupid comment I made, so they could go on forever, and be thrown in my face decades later, presented as the sum total of my character.

Yes, but hes not Ferris.

I agree with you about most of that list but LBJ should not be on it.
 
After the immaturity of "The Decision", (Which I hated with the power of a billion blazing suns. But thinking upon calmly about it realize that it would have been cool if he had let Cleveland know he was leaving the day before) he hasn't made any big faux pas. He's been a model citizen and family man, a successful businessman, and a solid social activist. And on the court, he's delivered championships to every team he's played for while not missing games or pouting.
 
He has a worse public perception than MJ but that's because of the way media digs into stars then and now. Interviews with their peers will come away with most saying LBJ is a decent guy while MJ is an A-Hole.