Chron: Don't buy into hype of LeBron James

I will never understand why 18-year-olds want to play professional sports as little as I understand why college players declare early only to be rewarded with mediocre careers. It must royally suck to have to be in up to five cities/week, among other things.; it's expected for rookies to hit the wall by midseason. I certainly couldn't devote my life to basketball - or any other career - at that age. But that is their choice, and the league's say in the matter extends only to persuasion (though it can influence the league's style of play, which has devolved into isolation-play and isn't anywhere near as fundamentally sound as highschool basketball.)

No rookie straight out of high-school (in recent memory) has ever led a team. O'Neal was too thin and couldn't go around people or draw contact like Kemp could; Bryant (who was a good prospect only because of isolation offense) forced stupid one-on-one matchups and never read screens for him, even in the playoffs; and Tracy McGrady's shot was worse than Kemp's when he entered the leage. Only a handful have even become stars on the teams that drafted them. James is really going to hate playing for the Nuggets (unless he pulls a Kobe Bryant and forces a stupid trade to a big-market team).

GMs are probably afraid of the hype more than passing on him.

 

7 words:
"Guaranteed contracts for first round draft picks"

these kids are very shortsighted. I don't think most of them give a damn about their careers or their future. It seems most of them are thinking about how they can spend those millions right now.

 

Michael Hunt of the Milwaukee JS didn't work real hard on this article. Big chunks of it are carved outta the long Mike Wise article I c'n'p'ed below which appeared in a recent edition of the NY Times. Hunt cut out some facts and quotes, added a few opinions, and sent it in to his paper as 'work.' You too can be a sportswriter.


Manchild Approaches the Promised Land
By MIKE WISE


KRON, Ohio — On the lacquered wooden bleachers of the St. Vincent-St. Mary High School gymnasium, they all took their places. Gloria James, the mother. Eddie Jackson, the surrogate father. Good friends, family. Unpaid advisers. Even the old-school loner, the man who taught him to use his left hand in the backyard.

All the guardians of LeBron James's fading youth were out in force, watching the prodigy hold court.

James made fallaway 3-pointers from 25 feet and beyond, seven in a row during a taut scrimmage at the end of varsity basketball practice. He made the ball disappear in the crevices of the lane and then reappear in his teammates' hands. James, the nation's most celebrated high school basketball player, kept passing and shooting. All net, all afternoon.

Watching James play basketball in high school may be akin to watching Bobby Fischer play checkers in the cafeteria at lunchtime or Dizzy Gillespie marching with the school band at halftime. Something seems terribly out of place.

Judging his readiness for the National Basketball Association is impossible. But Michael Jordan invited him to play several times when Jordan was preparing his most recent comeback last year, and James was invited to practice with the Cleveland Cavaliers (whose coach, John Lucas, was later fined for including an under-age player in an N.B.A. workout).

James, a 17-year-old high school senior, will be on his way to a man's world in no time, if he is not there already. Before the leap, though, the people who know him well make sure to gather round, to keep the outsiders away and themselves in, a protective shell around a gifted child.

"It's like when you take a piece of gold and you let all these people touch it and feel it, it loses its glare," said Maverick Carter, James's friend and former teammate. "You got a piece of gold, you stand around it and don't let no one touch it. That's his circle."

There is gold in LeBron James, millions in his jump shot and his peripheral vision. Next June, N.B.A. Commissioner David Stern is expected to introduce James as the No. 1 pick in the league's 2003 draft.

Several N.B.A. executives believe the lottery winner will inherit in James the scoring savvy of Kobe Bryant, the shooting stroke of Ray Allen and the court sense of a young Magic Johnson, compressed into a muscular, 6-foot-8, 240-pound frame.

But that is still seven months away. Today, as the most heralded schoolboy ever, James is simply America's largest wishbone, being pulled every which way.

Nike and Adidas tug hard, hoping James can swing the sneaker war in their favor. The news media want his time. Time Warner, too; for about $8 a household, the local cable affiliate will broadcast some of his games to 14 counties in northeastern Ohio. The demand for his talent is so great his team did not play in its own gym the past two seasons. St. Vincent-St. Mary's games were moved to a 6,000-seat arena at the University of Akron, where James outdraws the college team.

Big man on campus is putting it mildly. His high school had to put out a message in the school paper last month, asking students to refrain from asking for autographs or pictures during school hours.

"So much for most likely to succeed," Patrick Vassel, 17, the senior class vice president, said as he stood outside the St. Vincent-St. Mary gym. "I'm not going to get $10 million next year. I'm not going to be the No. 1 pick in the draft. So I'm not going to vote for myself. I think LeBron is a shoo-in."

All-Stars like Bryant and Kevin Garnett did not garner this kind of attention when they made the jump from high school to the N.B.A. in the mid-1990's. But the frenzy over James just keeps growing. He will play in three of America's most storied college basketball arenas this season: the Palestra in Philadelphia, U.C.L.A.'s Pauley Pavilion and the Dean E. Smith Center at the University of North Carolina.

ESPN2 will televise a game between St. Vincent-St. Mary and Oak Hill Academy of Virginia on Dec. 12. Bill Walton and Dick Vitale will call the game. A Web site is selling four of James's game tapes from last season for $49.99. David Letterman's producers have already called James's high school, asking when he can come on their show.

James's coach, Dru Joyce II, has an imposing task, trying to help a teenager trapped in a man's body negotiate the fine line between boredom and demolishing an overmatched, 5-foot-10 opponent's confidence. After all, there is still another Ohio state title to pursue.

"Bron is such a great talent, it's hard to keep him motivated," Joyce said. "What we're trying to do is make him understand: all you got is right now. Let's take care of this moment. All of that other stuff will be there."

The Extended Family

James spent his first years with his mother in an area of north Akron called the Boondocks, in the house in which Gloria James was raised by her mother and grandmother. "We had what we needed and sometimes what we wanted," she said. "Mad love, we had a lot of that."

Her grandmother died in 1986, her mother in 1987. The house was eventually condemned and torn down by the city, and now there is only an empty lot where it stood.

Gloria James gave birth to LeBron when she was 16. She was on her own at 19. She declined to talk about LeBron's biological father, with whom he has never had a relationship.

Gloria began dating Eddie Jackson when LeBron was 8 months old. They went out for three years and remained friends. Jackson stayed involved in the child's life and says he has not missed a single game since LeBron was in seventh grade.

"Eddie is his dad," Gloria said. "Always has been. He's been a great father and a great friend to me. LeBron loves him and trusts him."

Gloria worked in accounting and retail jobs, but she said she could not save enough money to rent an apartment or move into a house. "We moved from here to there after the house was torn down," she said. "Finally, after a few years, I did get an apartment in public housing in north Akron. We did some more moving. It took me awhile to get stable."

For nearly two years, while Gloria went through personal crises, LeBron lived with a youth coach and family friend, Frankie Walker, his wife, Pam, and their family. James remains close with the Walkers.

"He was better than the rest of the kids," said Walker, who showed James how to shoot with his left hand when he was 8 years old. "But I never let him know that. I taught him how to share the ball, not be selfish."

Gloria James said she always took care of her son financially. "I gave him money, food stamps," she said. "I did receive a couple years of welfare. I'm not afraid to say the assistance helped us survive. But wherever LeBron was, nobody had to pay his way."

Jackson, who is a concert promoter and a real estate broker, pleaded guilty in August to state charges of mortgage fraud and is expected to be sentenced to three years in prison. Jackson also faces federal charges of bank fraud and mail fraud; federal prosecutors have accused him of stealing two checks worth $197,000 and of using fraudulent documents to obtain $100,000 in home loans.

Jackson, who served 26 months in prison in the early 1990's on a drug trafficking conviction, has worked with several social-service programs, including one that offers defendants drug treatment in lieu of prison.

"You do something in 1990 and now this thing, and it's like I haven't been doing anything good in LeBron's life the last 12 years," Jackson said. "I made mistakes, but now everybody is saying Eddie Jackson shouldn't be around LeBron. I've done right by him, tried to have the best influence on him I can."

James and his mother still live in subsidized housing, on a hill in west Akron. "I think this game is what's kept me out of trouble," James said. "Basketball has kept me off the streets. I was very close to that."

He is guarded around reporters he does not know well. Like another basketball prodigy at a young age, Shaquille O'Neal, he speaks in concise sentences.

"I take it day by day," James said. "I might not even wake up tomorrow, you know. I can't take things for granted. I have to take it second by second and live out these years I've got right now that God has given me."

The Right Time and Place

On a gray, chilly Saturday, James's high school team drives to a suburban high school for the season's first scrimmage, a four-team round robin.

St. Vincent-St. Mary dominates the action against the host school, Stow High. In the traditional handshaking line afterward, James barely acknowledges the kids that his team has just drummed, slapping their hands nonchalantly, but not looking at any of the other players in the eye.

Several minutes into the second scrimmage in an auxiliary gym, James takes two hard dribbles to the basket from the right wing and rises, also elevating his hands. As he slams the ball through the rim, the old metal fixture gives way and a loud pop pierces the gymnasium. The bolts come free from the backboard and the apparatus crashes down.

James has broken his first rim.

After a few moments of concern over whether James is all right — he has bruised his neck — a playful exchange ensues. Jackson picks up the rim. "Who wants this rim?" he asks. "Can we have it? This is going in the trophy case." No deal, the school's athletic director said.

It was Chris Dennis, a family friend, who helped create this ruckus nearly three years ago. He walked into a hotel room in Indianapolis during the N.C.A.A. men's Final Four with a videotape and a short LeBron James biography that he had put together.

The tape — grainy, black-and-white footage — was of a regional playoff game from James's freshman year. Sonny Vaccaro, an Adidas basketball representative, was in the room, as were others connected with Adidas. Dennis was fortunate enough to have a decent audience that day.

"There were probably three, four coaches from top-25 schools," he said. "I didn't give an introduction or anything. I just put the tape in. They were glued to the TV."

Left-handed scoop shots, no-look passes in the open floor and, what caught most people's attention, composure.

"He was a freshman at the time, but he was so poised," Dennis said. "He was looking at the referee, making sure he didn't get a five-second count. He looked at the clock to find out how much time was left. What 14-year-old does that?"

James showed up at Vaccaro's ABCD Camp in the summer of 2001 and secured his status as the best young player in the country. In time, Jordan would inquire about James's mother and O'Neal would attend one of James's games. The sneaker companies would begin their bidding war, and his name and likeness would become a commodity on the Internet.

Dennis tried to sum up the fuss by saying, "The school, Sonny, Adidas, Nike, the coach, everyone — eventually they all bow down to King James."

The Plan for the Young Man

James has already honed the professional athlete's habit of referring to himself in the third person.

"These people around here respect my image, they respect LeBron James and our basketball team to a level that we don't have to be big-headed," he said after a recent practice.

Of the people in his life looking out for him, he said: "Of course, every time you've got a positive background behind you and people that's just for LeBron, the person, instead of just LeBron, the basketball player, you know it's good to have a good trust and a good circle around you."

He loves his mother and the game, in that order. "Anything that's good and great, you could put my mother in that category," he said.

His coach worries that the adjustment to the N.B.A. is going to be tougher than people are telling James. "What he needs to understand is, he's going to be playing against grown men," Joyce said. "I just don't need more people coming around here and telling him how great he is. It's gotten out of control."

Gloria James has a related set of concerns about her son. "I didn't want someone ruining his life at a young age," she said. "I remind him that there are those who will take advantage of his position. There are a lot of females who would love to hem him up with a baby. So, `Just protect yourself; be smart,' I always tell him."

Jackson, his surrogate father, noted that James's talent has produced major revenue for his school; if 4,000 people attend 10 home games, and the average ticket costs $10, he said, that comes to about $400,000 a season.

"Now, what's that over his high school career?" Jackson said. "I'm not against it, but let's just be straight up about it, O.K.?"

Jackson said he opposed the high school's agreement to broadcast some games on a pay-per-view basis. "Donate that money to a cause or a scholarship, rather than the school and cable company benefit," he said.

St. Vincent-St. Mary officials said that all the revenue is used by the school for educational purposes.

Dennis, the family friend, put together a marketing plan for James when he was 14. Dennis said he has battled with Jackson over what James can accept and what he cannot.

"I would tell him, `Nike can't do that, but this is what we can have Nike do for us,' " Dennis said. " `Man, the money is going to come. But this is how we have to do it.' Sometimes, Eddie was like, `It's there for the taking.' But we couldn't do it."

Dennis, who describes himself as an unpaid adviser to the family, works for a nonprofit agency that provides after-school programs for children.

"I want to be part of the team that makes sure the right people are around him," Dennis said, when asked to explain his relationship with James. "If it happens, great. If not, I'll just make sure my kids keep getting scholarships to college. If you're thinking LeBron is going to provide you with money at the end of the rainbow, you're not objective anymore."

James's family and advisers put together a back-to-school giveaway at the Akron Urban League last August. Bookmarks bearing his likeness were given away, along with backpacks, folders and notebooks. The shoe companies courting James donated the supplies.

James's classmates tell of the day he showed up at school last spring with a bag of sneakers and sweats from Nike, Adidas and And1. He held a trivia contest at lunchtime, asking students to name halftime scores of playoff games, among other things. A correct answer won a pair of new sneakers, until all the items were gone.

"Last year he was driving a Navigator, he had a two-way pager and a cellphone on his belt," said Vassel, the senior class vice president. "I was starting to get worried. But he's back to himself a little more now."

Walking around school, James sometimes still seems in the late stages of adolescence, bobbing a classmate's ponytail or joking with friends.

"He's still a 17-year-old," said Carter, James's former teammate. "He wants to be a 17-year-old. But it's kind of hard when people all want a piece of you. You have to become a little more leery of people, especially the ones that want to be hangers-on."

 

1 word " CASH"
or another 1
"MONEY"

 

Question: WHEN DID HIGH SCHOOL BASKETBALL START???

sheesh when i was in high school i thought it started in the
second semester

James has to have been playing all year round.

Rocket river

 

Yeah, the NYTimes article was much better. Hunt must've drank one too many beers before his deadline, that or he finished his deadline early to drink one too many beers.

It's fascinating to see that LeBron's parents have faced personal troubles with their lives but look dedicated in protecting James' interests. Maybe because the cash is so guaranteed that they're taking this approach, but the temptation to sell out is unimaginable in this case.

I wonder if LeBron can control his destiny like Kobe and KG. There's people out there waiting to see him fall just to point out the ridiculousness of early entry draftees, but if you're living your dream, pursue it. If college is your dream, you can pursue that as well.

 

guaranteed millions is alot more attractive than 4 years of college and a $50,000/year job. even the job isn't guaranteed. even if he is a bust after his initial 3 years, he'd still would have made more money in that span than he would have had he went to college and worked the rest of his life. the only problem is if he can't manage those millions than he's gonna worse off than ever.

 

He runs a great risk of failure if he jumps into the NBA immediately. Someone so young like him needs a couple years of college to define his ball skills. Even if he got his millions now, do you really think he would keep it?

 

That's not really his decision to make unless he had a really really poor agent/manager. Shaq, Kobe, Zeke, Dream, and Magic all have faith in their managers to put good use of their money. On the flipside, there were some of the 50 greatest working normal jobs. But today there's more NBA awareness of the average lifespan of an NBA player, and they're pounding it in to make real business judgements after their game.

There's nothing about LeBron James or his parents that would lead me to think he would blow away all of his NBA and endorsement money.

 

Yeah. I'm sure if someone came up to you with a briefcase with $10 million, you'd pass it up.

 

The thing is, a lot of these high-school players become very good NBA players. Certainly there are those who fail, but most often, if they are good enough to be drafted highly, they pan out. Last year's class can't really be counted in this because they are so young (although I'll say right now that DeSagana Diop will be a bust).

The thing is, they usually take four years before they become legit NBA players. Now, they can go to college for four years and get paid nothing, improve their skills, but still come into the NBA needing additional experience against NBA players before they become more refined. OR they can get paid 10 million over that four year period, get experience against LEGITIMATE NBA players and in almost every way be further along as players than if they'd gone to college. After that four year period, they are due for a second contract and they'll get even bigger bucks.

When it comes down to it, unless you are truly a TOP NOTCH talent out of high school, there is no reason to declare that early. If you're expected to go in the upper half of the first round, you'll probably become a good player. But if it's any lower than that, the odds are against you. And if the NBA career doesn't pan out, you still have lots of money from the contract, and can go play in Europe.

 

How many NBA Superstars/future HOFs in recent memory (last 7-10 years) can you name that played 4 years of college ball other than Tim Duncan? Playing 4 years in college won't do a single thing for you unless you had talent to start out with. Everyone just says "oh Duncan really benefitted by staying 4 years in college" and blah blah blah. What makes you think that if he declared for the draft after his freshman year or even if he skipped college altogether that he wouldn't be the player he is today?

Besides, as people have already stated, being a bust who was drafted top 10 will make you more money than you will ever make if you went to college and then got an average person's job. Even if you are a bust, you can still be a crappy benchwarmer and still make millions. Examples? Joe Smith, #1 pick. Samaki Walker, #9 pick. etc. etc. etc.

Even international teenagers are declaring for the draft now.
http://espn.go.com/nba/columns/misc/1472727.html

 

is drafting high school players really that bad? look at all the busts that come out of college.

 

He gets guaranteed money as a lottery pick. Even if he flops in his 1st contract people will still see the big P (potential) and still give him another chance.

Say what you want but if I had that kind of talent I would not even consider college. Is he NBA ready? I dunno, but when he appears to be the top pick (or at least a top 3 pick) no way can he walk away from that.

 

Hey if he can get the 20 mil as the first pick, he should take it.

DD

 

DavidS,

Isn't that in some way the GM's responsibilty to not draft unproven talent as high up? If high school players periodically made below the Top 15 in the draft, their payday wouldn't be as high and there could be the fear of dropping to the second round.

It's because talent evaluators have a fairly accurate idea of how 4 year players will do in this league that they will be passed over for these teenage phenoms. You had EG, a #1 or 2 lotto pick in one year, drop to #7 in the year he declared. Shane Battier benefitted greatly for his 4 years at Duke, but he was "penalized" with a lower pick because scouts thought they knew all the had to know about him. TMo fell to the second round.

I agree with you that fans get the brunt of this in the end, but what do you think is needed to correct this problem? An age limit would most likely be unconstitutional.