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Twenty years ago it was easier to be an eye-rolling skeptic than a true believer. Here was this recent high school grad telling the assembled news media ahead of the 2003 NBA draft of his not-too-subtle plan to “lift the city of Cleveland,” and soon.
“They’re getting there this season,” LeBron James assured us before the Cavaliers made him their first pick. “It will be lit up like in Vegas.”
Cleveland? Las Vegas? In what world?
I was a reporter and columnist for the New York Times at the time, and for those of us who wrote about basketball at every level, James was already a household name. By the time he was 17, his high school team in Akron, Ohio, had played on ESPN to a national television audience. Sports Illustrated had James plastered on the cover and billed him as “The Chosen One,” the sport’s next megastar, in the form of Michael Jordan.
James, the assessors assured us, should be even more than the return of Jordan, whom I and many others hailed as the sport’s greatest player in the 1990s. He was also part of Magic Johnson, who we hailed as the greatest point guard of all time in the 1980s.
It sounded exaggerated at best. Exploitative at worst.
The first time a shirtless James turned his back on me in the Cavaliers locker room in his rookie year and revealed the Sports Illustrated proclamation, abbreviated “Chosen 1,” tattooed on his back, my first thought was that Audacity. But I was worried at the same time, what on earth was this kid set up for?
I’ve been reflecting on those days as I watched James play for his third team, the Los Angeles Lakers, and near Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s longtime career record 38,387 points. Suffice it to say that it’s been a roller coaster of two decades for James, with his skeptics turned critics largely credited to his predestination, along with some miscalculated moments of his own creation.
I can admit to some caustic reactions to news unfolding before me on the deadline day.
In 2009, I focused my Sports of The Times column on the young star commonly referred to as King James despite not yet having a championship to his credit. After the Cavaliers were beaten by the Orlando Magic in the playoffs and he stormed off without a word to the winners or reporters, I snorted: What kind of leadership was this king showing?
When he left Cleveland for the Miami Heat a year later, in what he said in a TV spot that smelled of grandiosity, “to bring my talent to South Beach,” I wrote in my column, “Anyone outside of South Florida wants to root for Miami after.” James left Cleveland and his native territory of northern Ohio to pursue championship rings as a mercenary?”
Sure, the abuse for exercising his freedom of contract boiled over in hindsight, but worse was when contempt turned to mockery after James played poorly for Miami in the 2011 NBA Finals against the Dallas Mavericks.
After a fourth game that tipped the streak in Dallas’ favour, I described his post-game press conference as a “rabid analysis of James’ game” and “an uncomfortable interrogation.” Yes, he had played tentatively, but the questions were downright accusatory. I’ve been struck by how cacophonous and controversial coverage of the NBA has become as the league has grown into a global brand.
Basketball stars of the late 20th century lounged in locker rooms and conversed with small groups of reporters. We had close access and the stars became more humanized in our stories. Today’s NBA luminaries, James in particular, are powerful commercial brands with dealers carefully controlling access and messaging. It’s harder to humanize a brand.
In my final years covering the sport, it seemed to me that those who questioned James’ performance in relation to Jordan had long ignored or never realized that it wasn’t James who decided to be “the one”. That was just a label put on him as a teenager.
Two decades later and 36 points from breaking Abdul-Jabbar’s record, the suspected top scorer has also moved up to fourth on the career assists list. That performance reminded me of what his youth coaches at Akron, Lee Cotton and Dru Joyce II, told me in phone interviews: Never forget that James’ traveling teams weren’t the standard set of regional stars trying to outdo each other in showcase tournaments ; They were his neighborhood friends, best friends who he liked to hang out with, so it turned out he was actually a cross between Jordan and Johnson.
“The Chosen One,” which led Cleveland to its first major sports title in 52 years with the Cavaliers in 2016 and has lit up every city it’s played in while winning four championships, has never seen itself as a solo act. Count me as a true believer in this Team First result.
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