The day before the 2003 draft lottery, an 18-year-old LeBron James turned down a Reebok offer reported at around $115 million and signed with Nike instead. That decision set up a billion-dollar relationship with the brand. A detail ESPN’s Brian Windhorst revisited this week shows how much was also riding on the lottery draw itself.

A clause in his Nike deal, according to ESPN’s Brian Windhorst, tied extra money to one specific landing spot: New York.

“There was this dream, and in fact, it was kind of LeBron’s dream too,” Windhorst said on Hoop Collective. “Literally the night before he agreed to his Nike contract, in his Nike contract he got a 20 or 30% bonus if he got drafted to the Knicks. They agreed to that the night before the Lottery.”

“That’s why it was so important to get it done before the lottery,” he added. “And when the envelope opened and showed the Knicks at number nine, there was an audible in the room because people wanted LeBron to go to the Knicks.”

The bonus was real money. Nike signed James to a seven-year deal worth about $90 million, then the richest rookie shoe deal in NBA history. With a 20 to 30 percent Knicks bonus, it would have gone past $100 million. Windhorst noted that the clause had been written about for years, but it lands differently now.

The Knicks never came close. They ended up with the ninth pick, and Cleveland took James first overall, starting his career in his hometown. The envelope was opened, the room reacted, and the bonus never came into play.

The story arrives at an awkward moment. LeBron James is now a Philadelphia 76ers star after confirming he initially wished to join the Knicks in free agency. He will walk into Madison Square Garden on Tuesday as the Knicks raise their championship banner before the season opener.

ESPN’s Alan Hahn said LeBron has “flirted with the idea of the Knicks” for years, and Hahn noted that when it finally came time, the Knicks decided they were good.

The franchise that once had a financial pull on LeBron’s draft night now holds the title he spent years chasing in different cities. Windhorst reported that Nike hoped he would land in New York before he ever entered the league, so the dream was part business plan and part basketball. That is typical of LeBron’s career, in which large decisions have often had a commercial side.

The what-if is easy to picture. Had the lottery gone differently, LeBron’s first years could have been in Madison Square Garden and not Cleveland. Cleveland’s 2016 title and his later stops in Miami, Los Angeles, and now Philadelphia would not have happened the same way.

New York kept missing. The dream went unfulfilled in 2003, again when James picked Miami over the Knicks in 2010, and again this summer. Now the franchise Nike once hoped he’d play for holds the title James hoped to win there, and he starts his season in its building as the visitor.