i hate all the hype this kid is getting, its sort of like yao last year but worse, but what really bugs me is that some people on this site seem to be bashing lebron like all the other teams bashed yao last year, and know all those other people are having to take back what they said about yao, which is good but dont you think we should give lebron a chance unlike other people last year on yao. i mean its not lebrons fault he got all that hype, its just that he was so good in highschool he had to get it like yao in china he was just that good there to. just dont bash lebron right now because he might be the best basketball player ever or he might not be but i think we should all wait and see before judging him first, lets give him so time.
well, i think the difference between yao and lebron, is that lebron seems to be accepting the expectiations of him, his one comment on how he used to make three pointers all the time in highschool, and his attempt to be a rap star show that he expects to be the star that people want him to be. I agree the hype is bad because it is starting to inflate his fragile teenage head but he has to show that he knows his own limits. Yao on the other hand did not expect himself to do as well as people said and as for his bashers, a lot of their criticism was race based and just showed their ignorance of people that werent black or white. regardless, i would like to see james fall way below expectations simply so that our Yao can be the best #1 this century. therefore you will see me rooting for carmelo, wade and others this year cause ill be damned if lebron gets the ROY just on hype.
YAO WAS GETTING BASHED BY SPORTS WRITERS LEFT AND RIGHT. MOST HAVE NOT EVEN ISSUED A RETRACTION OF THE CLAIM. THESE ARE THE SAME IDIOTS WHO ARE NOW PRAISING LEBRON.
Why not bash him? His play has not yet justified the appraisal of him by the media. Of course, he hasn't had the opportunity, so let's not be too harsh... but stating that he, currently, is overrated is hardly a stretch of the imagination. Also, you make it seem like he hasn't invited the hype. But he has - he's played the media quite well. Far too much for me to have too much sympathy for your cariacature of him.
LeBron has been hyped up since his early high school days. And for good reason he was simply one of the best high School athletes ever. Hes the real deal. But now hes playing with grown men, so it would be a good time for the media to back off just a little bit. And let the kid grow into the player that everybody knows he can be. But it wont happen, LeBron brings ratings, LeBron brings in money even as an teenager. So the media will not back off anytime soon until the public loses interest. Which will not happen anytime soon b/c LeBron is an exciting player to watch. So I'd predict that the hype will continue to grow throughout the season even if LeBron conintues to shoot below 30%.
Naive Question: Did any other pro-star play as well as Lebron during HS or was he the MJ of HS B-Ball history? More importantly did they get the hype he got?
when yao ming was picked number one, sports writers were calling him the next sam bowie. lebron james cant shoot and now they're saying michael jordan was the same way in his rookie season.
I guess he set up negotiations for ESPN to broadcast his high school games. That manipulative eighteen year-old.
LJ is getting too much hype...That Nike commercial is weak... Melo will get ROY and LJ will be terrible this season...He has no jump shot...All he can do is dunk...
Here's an old Sam Smith article from July from ESPN.com. It mentions Lew Alcindor's high school days at Power Memorial. He only lost once in high school. Also, here's a list of best high school athletes, according to ESPN Page 2: http://espn.go.com/page2/s/list/highschool.html Hype over LeBron doesn't match Alcindor's -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- By Sam Smith Special to ESPN.com Hype makes people do strange things. Whole sports leagues, in fact. Although I can't remember if we called it "hype" in 1984 when Hakeem Olajuwon (then named Akeem) was entering the NBA. He didn't grab a collegiate championship, but he got about everything else, leading all players in rebounds, blocks and shooting. Back then, there was no draft lottery. The worst teams in each conference flipped a coin for the first pick in the draft. So it was clear what had to be done: Be the worst. Under that method this season, LeBron James would be trying to figure out what kind of winter coat he wants to wear in Cleveland or Denver. However, if all it took was being the worst, Chicago, Miami and Memphis surely could lose a few extra games here and there if it was going to mean future championships. But we know the Knicks are going to win the lottery to get James to save the league's most important market ... that is, unless the league decides to help out Jerry West and one of its important new markets in Memphis ... or whether the NBA has had enough of the sickness in Chicago and revives its best market of the last decade. That is how it's all decided, isn't it? It didn't have to be back then. Lose enough games and you got a 50-50 shot. And so that's what they did in '84. It was perhaps the most amazing month in NBA history. The previous season Houston had the No. 1 pick and took Ralph Sampson, who was something of the Yao Ming of his day. He was a giant whom many said would revolutionize the game with his unusual size combined with his athleticism. His entry was much anticipated, although several tournament failures in college against tougher players such as Buck Williams left some unsure of Sampson's eventual impact. But few doubted what Olajuwon would mean. Especially the Chicago Bulls. They had a team filled with high draft picks and rarely could win 30 games. Sure, they'd settle for Michael Jordan if they had to, but he wasn't what they were hoping for. It was Olajuwon. As general manager Rod Thorn would later say after drafting Jordan with the No. 3 pick, "He's not the kind of player to turn a franchise around." Olajuwon was. The Bulls had 26 wins on March 20. At the end of the season on April 15, they had 27 wins. They even traded away their best player, Reggie Theus, for fear he would help them win too many games as they lost 14 of their last 15. And the race was on with Houston. Back then, it was not uncommon to trade No. 1 picks for veterans. The other losingest teams were Indiana, Cleveland and the Clippers, who were trying to win. Chicago and Houston weren't. Portland had Indiana's pick, Dallas had Cleveland's and the 76ers had the Clippers'. Among that group, which ended with the top five picks in the draft, only the 76ers were trying for Jordan (they had Moses Malone at center). Billy Cunningham was coach, and his North Carolina connection was strong. He was going for Jordan and probably would have gotten him if the Clippers hadn't won a few games those last couple of weeks while the Bulls were dumping theirs. But back then, the Bulls couldn't even get that right. Houston, even with Sampson, was the best at tanking the season. They came barreling down the stretch, losing nine of their last 10 to get themselves into the coin flip, which they won for Olajuwon. Portland, in perhaps the most infamous draft mistake in history, passed on Jordan for Sam Bowie, and the Rockets were in the NBA Finals a year later. The hype about Olajuwon was justified. He went on to become one of the elite players in NBA history. Of course, he was no Jordan. Is there someone out there better than LeBron James, the Ohio high school sensation who'll be on ESPN2 tonight? We probably won't know for a few years, but it doesn't seem like it. Even guys whose personnel knowledge I respect think James will be a great NBA player. One thing is sure: No one has ever gotten the attention, buildup and hype of James. Games on pay-per-view. A record shoe contract to come. National magazine cover stories. Clearly, it's all part of the changing sports society in which teenagers are becoming a commonplace addition to NBA rosters. So no one is surprised that James is expected to leave high school and declare for the NBA draft next spring. The larger surprise is the unprecedented level of attention being paid to a high school kid, to the point where he ever was mentioned for the 2004 Olympic team. It wasn't like this for Shaquille O'Neal or Tim Duncan or David Robinson, the franchise-changing big men of the past 15 years. Robinson missed a couple of years in the Navy and no one was quite sure about him because of the college schedule he played. O'Neal never had great success in college, and neither did Duncan, who had this quirky nature that suggested education was more important than the NBA. Who knew if that kind of misguided person could make it in pro sports? The greatest hype? I'd have to say it was for Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, then named Lew Alcindor. High school games weren't televised back then, but we did have TV and even a couple of stations. When Alcindor was at Power Memorial High School, his game against Morgan Wooten's DeMatha powerhouse was a national story, especially since Power hadn't lost for several years. DeMatha won, and Alcindor went to UCLA and didn't lose again for several years. Alcindor's entry into the NBA was as anticipated as Wilt Chamberlain's. When Chamberlain came, there really wasn't much to the NBA. There were eight teams going as far west as St. Louis and Minneapolis. Wilt was The Giant. A Philadelphia product but always an adventurer, he decided to see America and went to college in Kansas. George Mikan was the standard for centers, but no one had ever seen anything like Wilt, who was the combination of power and grace. No one believed anyone that big could be that coordinated. But the NBA had this quaint notion back then that kids should stay in college four years. After three seasons at Kansas, Chamberlain had seen enough wheat and decided to spend a year traveling with the Globetrotters. Barely alive, the NBA then was giving teams "territorial" draft picks so popular players would not leave home, and Chamberlain went to the Philadelphia Warriors. He got by far the biggest contract in the league, then about $35,000, but bonuses and side deals doubled his income to make him easily the highest-paid player in the league for years to come. His first appearance, in an exhibition game in Los Angeles, drew the Sports Arena's largest crowd ever, and his first games against Bill Russell were a huge sports story for a league that still wasn't covered by media on a regular basis. Perhaps the next biggest hype was for the entry of Magic Johnson and Larry Bird. There were questions about both even when they played one another in the 1979 NCAA finals. There were doubts whether either, alone, could be the dominant player to carry a team like Abdul-Jabbar or Chamberlain, but as a pairing, bringing their rivalry to the NBA was much anticipated. They became, in effect, "saviors" of the NBA and winners as both led their teams to championships and were responsible for much of one of the most successful eras in the league's history. There were others whose arrivals brought considerable anticipation. There was Pete Maravich, the exciting scorer from LSU who was one of the most popular players ever in college for his free-wheeling style. There was Oscar Roberston, who headed for the Cincinnati Royals after an unstoppable college career; Bill Walton, who brought hippie consciousness and remarkable fundamental play to the NBA; Patrick Ewing, who was seen as the next Bill Russell and was the first prize ever in the initial NBA lottery after the 1984 embarrassment down the stretch; and Cazzie Russell, a dominant scorer at Michigan. I'd probably go with the guy Russell lost the position battle with, Bill Bradley. He was a New York territorial pick from Princeton. He never became the great individual star to match the others so anticipated, but his arrival was one of the biggest national sports stories at the time. He'd made a famous run in the NCAA Tournament with little Princeton and then went to Oxford to study for two years. Everything is bigger when it happens in New York. It's why, by the way, they have to say it twice, "New York, N.Y." And here was this good-looking, smart -- did we remember to mention he was white? -- talented basketball star coming to a miserable franchise in New York. Talk about your saviors. There would have been less newspaper space back then for Christ. It turned out it was Willis Reed who saved the Knicks, but the arrival of Bradley drew the most attention.
I don't care whatever thej hype he gets, but the NIKE commercialhe features in where he holds the ball to a standstill against Biby is the most stupid commercial of any sports commercials.
talking about double standard in the media!! According to those know-hows, although LJ can't shoot, that's fine becasue many stars like MJ didn't shoot well when they came to NBA. All these NBA stars, analysts brings it up and encourge LJ whenever they have chance. Yao can shoot, but he's gonna be a bust because he's a foreigner, or some other lame reasons assessed by the same group of people.
Some things to think about. Magic and Bird were tearing up teams filled with 21-22 year old studs. Lew Alcider lost only what 1 high school game and 1 or none college game (again against men, or at least young men, not sub 20 year olds). Sampson was also a single man wreaking crew in college just not quite Wilt like to carry his team by himself to the final four (again in the era where college teams were loaded). The hype on on these guys was well founded. Did Lebron even lead his high school team to an undefeated season and state championship? He might be a great player, but he might not (even of the proven guys above Sampson didn't come close to expectations), and a lot of people are going to look like idiots. BTW James has been treated with kid gloves compared with Yao, and at least Yao had played well against some good international competition. Personally, I don't think it is do to racism so much, nationalism yes. There is a lot more skepticism, criticism and American media bias against foreign players until their is no doubt how good they are (e.g., Dirk).
james will still have a very good season, besides amare stoudamire no highshcooler has ever came into the league and made an impact his first year. James will do that and he will be int he running for ROY, but Melo will lead the rookies in scoring but lebron will be a bit behind him and wade yet he wikll still have the rebounds and the assist to keep him in it
Do any of you actually WANT Lebron to fail? Obviously this guy does. http://www.projo.com/celtics/content/projo_20031029_29jdcol.96682.html Jim Donaldson: Here's hoping LeBron flops, and it IS about the money 01:00 AM EST on Wednesday, October 29, 2003 "Sonny, you're really taking this personal. The Don would consider it a purely business dispute." Tom Hagen, to Sonny Corleone, in The Godfather, after Don Corleone has been gunned down by members of the Salazzo Family. This isn't personal, LeBron. It's business. Big business. Very big business. Huge business. Which is why I hope you're a massive flop, a mega-bust, a colossal failure of gigantic proportions. So that all that money spent by Nike, and the Coca-Cola company, and Upper Deck, and all those other corporations who are lining up to throw mountains of cash at an 18-year-old kid four months out of high school who only tonight will play his first real NBA game, will be wasted. So that the mega-bucks they're doling out on spec will turn out to be the worst investment this side of CMGi stock. So that their pie-in-the-sky expectations for you will make the technology bubble that burst two years ago seem sensible in comparison. It's not that I want you to look bad, LeBron. It's those profligate corporate prognosticators I want to see with egg on their face. Coke has turned to you, to the tune of between $10 million to $12 million, to replace Kobe Bryant as prime pitchman for Sprite. You'd think, after what has happened to the clean-cut, seemingly highly respectable, ultra-talented Kobe, that corporate titans would be leery about shelling out multi-millions in endorsement dollars to anyone without an established, long-term record as both a great player and solid citizen. Obviously, that's not the case. Your contract with Coke, along with the $5 million, trading-card gig with Upper Deck, are mere pittances compared with the 12-year, $90 million deal you signed with Nike, which clearly hopes -- no, make that expects -- you'll be the next Michael Jordan. Has the world -- at least the business world -- gone mad? Or are they, instead, prescient geniuses? But proclaiming you The Next Big Thing, The Next Michael, The Next Tiger, doesn't make it The Truth. It could turn out to be The Next Big Mistake. At 6-foot-8 and 240 pounds, you were a man among boys playing high-school ball. But what position will you play in the NBA? You're an outstanding passer, with tremendous vision, uncanny court sense for one so young, and have a deft touch, but you're not quick enough to deal with NBA point guards at either end of the court. You don't shoot from the outside anywhere near well enough to be an effective two guard. You're closer to a small forward than a power forward, but it's going to be a lot tougher to go inside in the NBA -- against veterans who'll most certainly not want to be shown up by a highly touted kid -- than it was against high-school boys. But that doesn't appear to concern any of the suits in the corporate suites at Nike, or Coke, or the NBA and the television networks, either. The Cavaliers were a league-worst 17-65 last season and, consequently, averaged a league-low attendance of 11,497. Not surprisingly, not one of their games was featured on national television. This year, the Cavs are scheduled for 13 national appearances. All because of you, LeBron. It's not as if the networks are expecting fans to tune in to see Zydrunas Ilgauskas. The expectations for you, amazingly, tower even higher than the stack of greenbacks you got from Nike. And it's not as if you can afford to be the male equivalent of Anna Kournikova, who has gotten by on being a babe. Good looks won't be enough in your case, LeBron. You've got to be a great player -- the next Michael, the next Tiger -- to ensure sufficient return on the corporate investment of all that endorsement money. Big business has given you such big bucks that the $10.8 million you'll be paid by the Cavaliers to play basketball seems like chump change in comparison. The companies for which you'll be shilling rave about how you have tremendous name recognition in the all-important demographic of young consumers, about how you are the poster child for the hip-hop generation, about how you have "street cred." But what if you struggle this season? What if the Cavaliers -- as seems likely -- remain a sub-.500 team? It's ridiculous, it's crazy, it's lunacy for a kid who just got out of high school to get all those endorsement dollars before he's even played a pro game. Which is why, LeBron, I hope you're a massive flop, a mega-bust, a colossal failure of gigantic proportions. It's not personal. It's business.
