CLEVELAND – This doesn’t tell you all you need to know about LeBron James as a person, but it’s a good start.

On one of the biggest days of his basketball career, meeting the Knicks and Nets for the start of his free agency, James took time out to do something. In the lobby of the IMG building, where his manager Maverick Carter rents an office on the eighth floor for his LRMR marketing firm, sits a small but bright coffee shop, “Good to Go Café.”

James has probably dropped by a half-dozen or so times, made small talk with its proprieter Anna Harouvis. There is an old truth that the way someone treats people in the service industry tells a lot about a person.

As James strode in for his big meetings, with a billion things on his mind, he made sure to drop by the coffee shop and say hello to Anna. Small gesture. Big impression in this corner, especially hearing how big a tipper he is. The tipping stories you hear about some other millionaire athletes are mind-boggling.

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Can’t say I got a strong impression from Knicks brass that they felt James was leaning toward Broadway. They honestly couldn’t read it, but he laughed a lot, I was told. But the Nets were a tough act to follow with Jay-Z and the charismatic Russian billionaire. I imagine it was a livelier room than the Knick meeting. Donnie Walsh seems a little sensitive about his neck surgery that has forced him temporarily into a wheelchair. When Walsh met with the media after the draft in a board room at the training facility, the staff kept the wheelchair out of site. Hey, it’s life.