Welcome to the magical world of King James. It's nice, right? Always sunny. Palm trees. A pair of championships, working on a third. The Decision? That worked out just fine. And at the center of it all, always making and remaking his world exactly as he likes it: the most stylish empire-builder in sports. "This thing is about more than just basketball," he says. Sort of makes you wonder: What will the King conquer next?
After morning practice, after the media session, LeBron James went to the locker room and iced, then got pulled for a random piss test, so now he's late, which he does not like being. Also, he's tired. There's a chef here at the warehouse, where Tupac and Snoop and Jay Z keep the rhythm, and hot lights shine over racks of clothes and shoes to put on, which he loves—he loves this shit—fashion is his candy, just ask Randy, to whom he has handed his phone to take photos. He wants pictures of himself in the outfits, maybe to tweet, which he also loves. But he's tired, that's the thing. Sluggish. And so right in the middle of a sentence about chicken and hot sauce, which the chef just handed him, he switches gears, and his eyes pop wide, and his mouth goes rubbery, and, enunciating perfectly, he booms: You might be deep in this game, but you got the rules missin / Niggaz be actin like they savage, they out to get the cabbage / I got nuthin but love, for my niggaz livin lavish.
People seem used to it. None of his handlers give pause. But it does seem a little...dissociative.
Motherfuck the rest, two of the best from the west side / And I can make you famous / Niggaz been dyin for years, so how could they blame us?
He loves to sing. He refuses to have anything to do with coffee. Singing is his coffee. Rejuvenated, he dances in the outfits for the camera, clowns like he always did back in high school, gets every bored person here happy.
He would like to be an actor. A comedy actor. He's shooting his first movie, Ballers, with Kevin Hart. The other thing he would like is to play in the NFL. "Some days I want to be a singer. But my voice? Then the next day I want to be Picasso." He would like to be a billionaire. "If it happens. It's my biggest milestone. Obviously. I want to maximize my business. And if I happen to get it, if I happen to be a billion-dollar athlete, ho. Hip hip hooray! Oh, my God, I'm gonna be excited."
I'm tight grill when my situation ain't improvin / I'm tryin to murder everything movin.
···
He's ten years into this insane career. Probably ten more to go with the NBA, he figures. So it's about halftime. It's something to think about. "My drive to be the greatest basketball player ever is very high." Everything right now is fantastic. A Miami mansion, a beautiful wife and two sons. Cars. More money than any other American athlete besides Floyd Mayweather, God love him. Sportswriters are having orgasms: The King is going for a three-peat with the Miami Heat, he has won four of the past five NBA MVP awards, his right arm is as fast as a helicopter blade, and he could notch a triple-double every night if he wanted.
Controlled exceptionalism, the most gifted ever? The game seems so easy he's left challenging only his own efficiency. They say he's Michael Jordan for a new generation. Or maybe they'll say Michael Jordan was the LeBron James of his generation, same difference, history will not bother splitting hairs. "Dr. J couldn't do what he does. Magic couldn't do what he does," says Heat president Pat Riley.
Being excellent at absolutely everything like this, it carries responsibility. Off the court, on the court, it weighs on him. All those people wanting more points out of him. They pay to see a superhero, and the superhero should shoot the ball, create lanes into which he can explode into everlasting glory, like Baryshnikov performing consecutive grands jetès, like Pavarotti achieving nine effortless high C's in one aria. (Seventeen curtain calls for that one.) People who pay to see history being made expect history to be made.
"Like, I could average thirty-five points a game if I really wanted to," he says. He is beautifully handsome, solid and smooth as a sycamore. "But then—it wouldn't be me," he says. "So I don't know if I could do it, because of my instincts. I see a teammate open—even if I have a great shot—I see a teammate open for a better shot, I gotta feed him. It's like, my mind sometimes be like 'Shoot it,' but then—my instincts, you know?"
He is thoughtful. He is a man who chews on ideas this way and that, enjoys the texture. The battle between predisposition and will. It's something to think about. "This thing is about more than just basketball," he says. "I can play basketball with my eyes closed and my hands tied behind my back. The way my mind, my mind starts working, we could probably be here for like...it could be like midnight. Someone will have to turn my switch off."
One of the things that bothers him is when people say, "You've changed." First of all, he hasn't. He still has his instincts. He still has Akron sitting in him like a bag of cement.
···
"Winning is my drug," he says. "Winning is my ice cream. Like my kids. They want more. 'More! More!' They just want more."
Actually, no. Right now Bryce, who is 6, is staring down at a melting bowl of something beige in a shop minutes away from the family's mansion in Miami's Coconut Grove.
"Yo, what's the matter?" says James, six feet eight, 250 pounds collapsed into an itty-bitty ice-cream-parlor chair, motioning to his son, who is not complaining, who is sitting alone, silent, and not easy to notice amid the swirl: customers, cops, some of James's handlers, ice cream scoopers, a floor mopper, and his wife, Savannah, in yoga pants, a yellow tee, eating salad from a Tupperware container she brought, exercising mother power well-wrought. "I said now!" she barks at 9-year-old Bronny, who actually, technically, prefers later. The family is background. James is foreground. Everyone gets it. Daddy is working, tossing out quotes to one enraptured person or another, about this game and that game, to dunk or to pass, to stay in this city or go to that one (no, he has no answer about Miami), to sell a sneaker, a TV, a hamburger. Savannah is not the type to do some wife dance for the enraptured people. She will avoid making eye contact if she can get away with it. She's the serious one. He's the funny one, the charismatic, cool one. They got married last summer, having been together since high school in Akron, since way before he became King James.
"You don't like your ice cream?" James calls to his son.
Bryce looks down at the melt, up at his dad. Demoralizing. Hard to admit. A dud of a flavor choice. "I don't like it," he says.
"Go get something else!" James says. "Try something else. You ain't got no complaints!"
Fatherhood, he says, is a lot like sports. "Being a leader of my household, a leader of Miami, a leader of Team USA. It's the same exact thing. You can sense when a guy is frustrated—maybe doesn't feel involved enough in the offense. As leader you go over to him, you know, 'How can I help?' Because at the end of the day, we all have one common goal—and that's to be great."
Winning, being great, it's the whole point of life. Is it not? Is there any reason to tiptoe around that fact? Winning, James says, is what a team does, not a person. That notion sits at his core and explains everything. The tattoo across his back, huge, shoulder to shoulder, says chosen 1. It's not simply precocious. It's bigger than that. It's what happened back in Akron, an American allegory. A dirt-poor fatherless nobody alone in his bed at night, hoping for his mom to come home, which she didn't—for a couple of years.
All that, and now all this.
Basketball took hold. In his senior year of high school, averages of 31.6 points, 9.6 rebounds, 4.6 assists, and 3.4 steals per game. Averages. But the thing that really happened back then was a team. A family. You finally get one, you cling. All those guys. Sian, Willie, Dru on the Fighting Irish, of course, but also Maverick and Rich and Randy, all those guys who would come over his place in the projects, where his mom finally landed, $22 a month for a tiny apartment, and everyone wanted to hang there. Like a family reunion every single day, playing video games, goofing around. He says they came there because they loved his mom. They say it was because of him. "His charisma," says Randy Mims, who back then filled the role of big brother and is now his day-to-day manager. "Everyone wanted to be around him. He was born with it. He still has it. It's what fills arenas."
Next thing he's 17 years old, he's on the cover of Sports Illustrated. A Nike contract. First overall pick in the 2003 NBA draft by the Cleveland Cavaliers.
"I go from $10 in my pocket to $100 million. In high school. Yup."
···
So, second of all, regarding change, of course he's changed. "Good! That's like a good thing," he says. "I'm like, 'Thank you.' Shit. I'm 29 years old with a family—I'm married with a family. I—of course I've changed. The problem is, you haven't changed. And that's why you dislike what I do, you know."
He leans forward. He's not going to be interrupted on this point. "As an African-American, we hear it a lot where we grow up. You've changed." He's sick of hearing it used as a criticism. "Because you've tried to better yourself and because you've made it out. 'You're not the same person that we used to know.' Of course I'm not. I'm trying to better myself. Change is not a bad thing. Thinking that it's bad, you know, that's one thing I think is a downfall for African-Americans for sure."
When he was still with the Cavs, he got a tattoo on his right forearm: 330. The Akron area code.
One person he thanks for all his success is his father. Well, it's not actually a thanks. More of a conversation. "Like, 'Wow, Dad, you know what, I don't know you, I have no idea who you are, but because of you is part of the reason who I am today.' The fuel that I use—you not being there—it's part of the reason I grew up to become who I am. It's part of the reason why I want to be hands-on with my endeavors. And be able to put my guys that's with me now in position. Like Maverick Carter, my right-hand guy in my business. Rich Paul, my agent. Randy Mims, my friend—he's my manager, you know. So me in a position allowing people around me to grow, that maybe wouldn't have happened if I had two parents, two sisters, a dog, and a picket fence, you know?"
Change, of course, is exactly what turned James into basketball's most hated villain for a stretch. That story occupies an indelible chapter in pop-culture history. He left Cleveland in 2010 to go play for Miami. The Decision. Over 13 million people watching the big obnoxious reality show, which was, he'll remind you, to benefit the Boys & Girls Clubs of America. But still. Tone-deaf. The guys from Akron had a lot to learn about how to run a multimillion-dollar athlete's career. "Crazy," says Mims. "I don't think any of us had any idea we'd get the reaction we did. I think we were all in shock."
The hissy fit in Cleveland—and across the Midwest, and inside like-minded pockets of America nationwide—was not subtle. People in the streets set fire to LeBron James jerseys. They stabbed LeBron James dolls. Dan Gilbert, the owner of the Cavaliers, threw gasoline on the flames. A "shameful display of selfishness and betrayal by one of our very own," he told Cleveland in an open letter. A "shocking act of disloyalty.... The self-declared former 'King' will be taking the 'curse' with him down south....Sleep well, Cleveland."
Poop on him!
The reaction was so strong and childish, a lot of people eventually woke up and looked inward.
···
The Decision show was a flop. He gets that. But the decision itself was just a man having a growth spurt. "The best thing that ever happened to me," he says. "I needed it. It helped me grow as a man. As a professional, as a father. At the time, as a boyfriend. It helped me grow. Being confined, I spent my whole life in Akron, Ohio. For twenty-five years. Even though I played professionally in Cleveland, I still lived in Akron. Everything was comfortable. I knew everything, everybody knew me—everything was comfortable. I needed to become uncomfortable.
"Now I've seen everything on and off the floor this league has to offer," he says. "I got an answer for everything. Winning, losing, being a free agent, staying, leaving, media, media down on you, media big up on you, agents, money, parking it, family, money. All, everything. So whatever your question is, I can deliver."
Former Texas A&M quarterback Johnny Manziel said in an interview that the thing he was most thankful for when getting crushed by the media was James texting him and giving him advice.
"Oh, seriously?" says James, flashing a grin. "He said that?"
What did he tell Manziel?
"My secret words."
How about Pacers swingman Paul George? That hand slap in Game 2 last year? The two were going at it, genius versus genius, George beating James with a hard dunk, James answering with a deep three-pointer. After the horn, James followed George, reached for him, said, "I got you back, young fella," and so they slapped hands, enemies fraternizing. Ever since the slap, George is having the season of his life, and now people act like James put magic Jesus oil on him.
"I'm very good at knowing talent, I guess," he says about his friendship with George. "I knew he could be really, really good. I had a couple of conversations with him. I just see talent in a guy.... I'd do it for anyone. But if someone reaches out to me for advice how to get better, I'm doing it. I can't tell what I said. My secret words."
He has a thing for greatness. "I'm always keepin' on other athletes. I love Tom Brady. I love the comparisons with him and Joe Montana. I love Floyd Mayweather—the comparisons with him and Muhammad Ali. 'Ooo, can Floyd Mayweather be the greatest of all time?' You know. Things like that. Sidney Crosby and the duel between him and Alex Ovechkin and who's the best, you know. Even to a point where, like, Kyle Korver just broke the three-point record for consecutive games. Like, ninety games straight, he's had a three-point. I was like, 'Wow, that's crazy.' You know, I don't even know that stuff about me until, actually, if I'm watching SportsCenter or reading social media. I had no idea that I've gone this long with scoring consecutive double-digit points until I see... I had no idea. I didn't know what number I was at. I was like, 'I don't know.' I was like, 'Oh, for real? I got 500 straight double-digit games?' Like, it's still in counting now, I'm up there with Kareem and Jordan. It's like, sheesh. I've done some pretty good things."
Around the time he won his second NBA championship with Miami in 2013, he got a tattoo high and bold across his right shoulder. akron, it says.
"Miley Cyrus? She has a great voice! She don't need the shenanigans. She can have some of the shenanigans, but not all of the shenanigans, you know? And she can be at peace! She can be at peace.
"Shenanigans."
···
It's safe to say now, three years into life in Miami, that LeBron James's villain persona did not stick. He tops the league's list of best-selling jerseys. His sneakers crush the competition in stores, outselling Kobe, his nearest footwear rival, like six to one. The LeBron 11, for $200, has hyperposite construction—a combination of Foamposite material and performance synthetics—and a new layer of Lunarlon cushioning; and anyway, Nike generates about $300 million off the sneakers.
James did not go on a PR offensive to achieve redemption among the people who were burning the jerseys and stabbing the dolls. People thinking of him as some run-of-the-mill narcissistic asshole would give up, he figured. Keep doing what you do and people eventually figure out there is more to the story.
"The thing is, he hasn't changed," says billionaire Warren Buffett, his friend of six years. They eat hamburgers, go shopping in Omaha together. "He's a solid guy. Fame has not gone to his head. You have to give him credit. I would have been drunk with power. It says a lot about how his mind works."
His mind works by way of Akron. He hosted the whole Miami Heat team for Thanksgiving last year back in Akron. "I'm the biggest voice that my hometown has ever seen," James says. "I'm the biggest figure that my hometown has ever seen. I do know that. I can see that. The responsibility of being the inspiration and the light for my community—it's much greater than hitting a jump shot."
When he talks about his responsibility to his community, he doesn't go into charity-speak. Although there is plenty of that. He talks bigger. His responsibility, he says, is to the people in his community who get those words thrown at them: "You've changed." People in his own community accusing each other. "It's my responsibility to show them it's not a bad thing to be someone who's changed. Keep showing them what I'm doing. That what I'm doing is right. I'm not, obviously, I'm not no guru on life or guru on success or guru on, you know, huge topics in the world or in America. But I am an example. I'm an example that can be used."
When Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert wrote the open letter to Cleveland rallying its people to feel betrayed, the Reverend Jesse L. Jackson decided to respond to it.
"He speaks as an owner of LeBron," he wrote, "and not the owner of the Cleveland Cavaliers. His feelings of betrayal personify a slave master mentality. He sees LeBron as a runaway slave.... LeBron is not a child, nor is he bound to play on Gilbert's plantation and be demeaned."
It was shocking to people. To associate America's tragic past with modern sports. To make the link. To shine a light on the disproportionate ratio of black athletes to black professionals in ownership positions, or up atop any of the corporate ladders selling the swag. The conversation caught fire for a few days, then blew itself out. Uncomfortable. Buzzkill. One part of a much larger conversation that everyone keeps never having, that the artists hear, and sing songs about, making records that confound half of America trying to understand what's the matter with those people.
Jealousy is misery, suffering is grief / Better be prepared. When you cowards fuck with me / I bust and flee / These niggaz must be crazy—what??
By 2012, Dan Gilbert was well over his LeBron James-abandonment hissy fit. He opened Cleveland's first casino, with 1,900 slot machines and eighty-nine table games.
···
A customer comes up to him at the ice cream parlor. She can't stand it anymore. King James! She's curly, suburban. "Well—just, thank you," she says clumsily. "Thank you for everything."
"Um," he says. You'd think he'd have more prepared retorts. "Thank you for having me."
It's getting to be time to leave. He's got business back at home. Savannah has the kids over at a chalkboard on the wall, playing hangman, and now the puzzle is for Bryce. Remember he is 6, so this is difficult. "I know the answer!" James says, looking on. "I know it!" Savannah throws him wife eyes. Don't you even.
Savannah: "Give me a letter."
Bryce: "Um."
Savannah: "A letter. Three, two, one—"
Bryce: "M."
James: "M? No."
Savannah draws a noose around the head of the figure on the hangman puzzle.
James: "Draw him a neck. He gets a neck!"
Savannah: "We do the body, and then the arms and legs."
James: "A shirt and tie?"
Bronny: "A suit and tie."
Savannah: "Give me a letter."
Bryce: "D?"
James: "There it is! Yeah, there's a D!"
Savannah: "No, there's not."
James: "Oh, dang."
This goes on and on. Arms, legs, suit, tie, eyes, nose, hat. Little steps for the hanged man to have climbed to his own execution. Bryce has his finger on his lip, thinking. They need to leave. Go home. Important people waiting. Many other American families would have long since bailed. One letter finishes the puzzle: Bryce is coo_!
"C-O-O!" James is saying, his big body now on the edge of his ice-cream-parlor seat, like any fan in any arena late in the fourth. Buzzer time.
Savannah: "Give me a letter, Bryce."
James: "Bryce! It says 'Bryce is C-O-O_!' Coooooo! Coooooo!"
Savannah: "A letter—"
James: "Coooooooooo!"
Bryce: "L!"
"Nailed it!" James says, leaping to his feet. "Bryce is cool!" They high-five, spin, a family in an ice cream parlor, rejoicing.
The tattoo running down his right calf spells: Witness. And down his left: History.
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