Brendan Bowers - LeBron James vs. the NBA: The Case for the NBAs Greatest Player

In the 1980s, Cleveland Browns coach Sam Rutigliano teamed up with Dr. Gregory Collins to create the Inner Circle Foundation. The program was dedicated to helping Browns players improve mental health and maintain drug-free lifestyles. Their model now serves as the template for all NFL teams.

Today, Coach Sams Inner Circle Foundation has expanded to provide educational support to at-risk children in the third grade. The foundation offers a combination of literacy, personal development, and health programs throughout several public elementary schools in Cleveland, Ohio.

Recently, I was blessed to become a reading tutor for Coach Sams at Robert H. Jamison School. Witnessing the overwhelming passion for literacy from both students and teachers has been inspiring. This book is dedicated to raising awareness for that mission. For more on Coach Sams Inner Circle Foundation visit: http: // innercirclefoundation.org/

Finally, special thanks to my mom and dad, John and Eileen Bowers; brothers, Kevin and Trevor; and love of my life, Kate.

Contents

Foreword by Ryan Jones

Im not sure what sort of first impression the average 16-year-old kid can be expected to make. I only know now what I suspected then: that LeBron James was no average 16-year-old.

It was the spring of 2001, late in his sophomore year of high school, when I traveled from New York to Akron, Ohio, to meet the kid who had the basketball world buzzing. He wasnt yet famous, at least not among the general publicthat would come soon enoughbut for those of us who paid attention to high school basketball, his unique name was one wed been hearing for a while. By that time, he was already a two-time state champion, and that season hed been named Ohios Mr. Basketball; not long before my visit, USA Today named him a first-team All-American. These were the sorts of accolades that justified a national magazine sending a writer to spend a few days in Akron.

And that first impression? I met him first in the lunchroom at St. Vincent-St. Mary High School, just up the hill from downtown Akron. I liked him immediately. He was funny, a fast talker and obvious leader in his group of teammates and friends, massively confident even as he had yet to fully grow into his then 66 frame. Over the next couple of years, that impression would be reconfirmed again and again: the sense of humor, the knack for knowing every word to seemingly every rap song he heard, the innate leadership skills that showed themselves on and off the court. He was an easy kid to like. And all of this was without a basketball in his hands.

If anything, I was less sure of my impression of him on the court; I might be the only person alive who came away underwhelmed the first time I saw him play. In fairness, it wasnt an actual game, just a postseason pickup run with teammates at the St. V gym. His physical giftssize, speed, athleticism, explosivenesswere obvious, but his play was sloppy, and he looked disinterested. On natural ability alone, it was easy to see that he was a great high school basketball player. But beyond that? If this was all I had to go on, how impressed could I be?

Ive never been one for predictions, but almost inevitably where a teenage basketball phenom is concerned, the first thing that anyone asks is: How good can he be? In covering him through his next two years of summer and high school basketball, it was a question I askedand was askedoften. (For what its worth, I thought hed be a multi-time NBA All-Star, a guy who averaged 20-some points a game and regularly flirted with triple-doubles, but perhaps not the dominant force he became.) But the answer that always stuck with me came from Keith Dambrot, the man who coached him his first two seasons at St. V, and a man who had every reason to try to downplay the hype swirling around his young star.

Instead, Dambrot answered with an honesty that only fueled the buzz: He thought LeBron was the best high school player in the state as a freshman, and that he was probably the best player in the country as a sophomore. Looking into the future, and to LeBrons professional prospects, the coach was matter of fact: He saw no reason why LeBron couldnt be an all-time great.

At the time, the prediction seemed optimistic, if not a little bit reckless. As weve known for years now, it was entirely accurate.

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Theres an almost automatic follow-up to that question, of course: Its not only How good can he be? but Can he be better than ________? Its a question thats been swirling around LeBron since high school, and again, its one Dambrot answered as convincingly as anyone. Even then, way back in 2001, the coach saw his sophomore star as a hybrid of Tracy McGrady, Kobe Bryant, and Magic Johnson. It was a staggering comparison, and while Dambrot wasnt claiming this 16-year-old was on their level just yet, the coach fully believed LeBron could be, and would be, if he wanted it badly enough.

Again, we now know how that turned out. Hes not yet done playing, and even if he was, theres no definitive way to determine where LeBron ranks among such all-time greats, let alone Michael Jordan, the player he grew up idolizing and the closest thing to a consensus best-ever the League has seen. But with 14 seasons, almost 29,000 career points, four MVP awards, and three NBA titles under LeBrons belt as I write this, it hardly seems too early to consider his legacy.

With that in mind, I was immediately intrigued when Brendan explained the concept for this book. Sporting legacies dont have to extend beyond the boundaries of the competitors court or field, but the best of themMuhammad Ali, Jackie Robinson, Bill Russell, and Billie Jean King come immediately to mindare directly tied to what they accomplished beyond the box score. You can debate whether LeBron belongs in such company, but in a different era, under very different circumstances, he has built an on-and-off-court legacy that dwarfs that of his peers.

His social stances might not be as risky as they were for the legends mentioned above, but they carry risk nonetheless, and hes grown into them naturally. Hes done so even as hes built a broad business empire with interests in everything from fast food to Hollywood, proving himself a savvy businessman with sharp instincts. Most impressively, hes used the weight of his wealth and fame to lift up his community, partnering with Akron-based businesses, local government, and even his hometown university to encourage healthier lifestyles and guarantee a college education for thousands of kids.

Its crazy to think of all this now in the context of that first impression, way back in the spring of 2001, the tall, quick-witted kid trading jokes with his buddies about whose sneakers were in worse shape, who teased me after Id grown out my beard for looking like Jesus, or who, at dinner for an interview a year later, put away two root beer floats before his food arrived. He was a kid, a talented and engaging one with sky-high potential, but a kid nonetheless. Hes grown into a CEO, a husband and father with kids as old as my own, a social activist and community hero, and one of the greatest basketball players of all time.

With all this in mind, Im reminded how excited I was 16 years ago to see what hed accomplish in his basketball career. I realize now that I might be even more excited to see what hell do when basketball is over. Having already built a singular legacy, LeBron James has the rest of his life to add to it. The potential impact is massive. Theres still nothing average about him.