The GQ Cover Story: LeBron James

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.

The Legend of the Crime Stopper

Aquille Carr strode into the gym two hours before Baltimore's Patterson High School took the floor for a fall league game at St. Frances Academy. All 5'6" of him. Patterson's point-guard phenom smiled as he climbed the bleachers, grabbing a seat beside Coach Harry Martin. Carr sits at #26 on the influential Rivals150 prospect rankings, and when asked about the recruiting process, he rattled off scholarship offers nonchalantly, like memorized moons of Jupiter for a quiz. The University of Maryland. Baylor. Kentucky. Out they came.

"I started playing basketball when I was four years old," Carr says. "When I was seven or eight, that's when I realized I had to take it seriously."

So much for a learning curve. Carr exudes an extraordinary charisma. His ego's been bolstered by a city fawning over his talent, and he's still very much a teenager, prone to immaturity and outbursts. But he's magnetic, whether dressed in Patterson blues or a plain black tee and slacks. Always smiling, his body continually exhibits a lightness, a positivity. It's no wonder the gym, relatively empty when I arrived, begins to fill up an hour before Patterson takes the floor.

In the fall league game—just an exhibition, though that didn't stop organizers from selling "courtside seats" for $15—Carr got off to a rough shooting start. But he flashed scintillating bursts of ability, both in his capacity to weave through the lane as well as bolt downcourt so quickly that expectant defenders couldn't react quickly enough to defend the basket. The only thing I can compare it to is watching shifty New Orleans Saints running back Darren Sproles, then a senior at my high school's conference rival Olathe North High, when he'd slalom into a secondary that knew he was coming, but couldn't twist their hips fast enough to drag him down. (Sproles has made a habit of this in the NFL, too.) Carr, who typically glides into the lane, head down and fearlessly flying into the trees, is rarely blocked—his shot was swatted just twice last year, by Coach Martin's estimation.

"He has a phenomenal way of angling his body and getting his shots up without anybody blocking him," Martin says. I can see what he means almost immediately. Defending is all about anticipation and reaction, and when you can't anticipate what someone is going to do, there's not much chance you'll be able to react to it.

Given that this was a fall league game, the refereeing was lackadaisical, more attentive to ensuring the game ran on schedule than to calling every violation, and Carr, a player who relies on getting to the stripe, didn't get many breaks. A staunch competitor with an impetuous streak, Carr became frustrated, which manifested in his play—scattered and reckless. Relaying this story to Oklahoma City Thunder superstar small forward Kevin Durant, whose Facebook fan page is where I first discovered Carr, he regarded it a familiar struggle, something you have to learn to cope with.

"You wanna win so much, but you don't want to look like you're not coachable or you don't respect the game," says Durant, who's considered one of the NBA's calmest players. "It happens, you lose your cool. Everything isn't going to go the right way."

Carr's learning about the right way this year. His team will play a national schedule, traveling up and down the East Coast to face some of the nation's top prep competition. Patterson is fully outfitted by Under Armour, and the night before I arrived in Baltimore, the Minnesota Timberwolves' newly drafted forward Derrick Williams and Milwaukee Bucks point guard Brandon Jennings shot a commercial for the brand at Patterson. (Jennings, apparently, paid a local barber hundreds of dollars to hang out in case he needed a touchup, a quirk that had the Patterson coaches snickering). This year's Patterson team includes Shakir Brown, a budding star who transferred to link up with Carr, and Leonard Livingston, an athletic 6'10'' prospect. Patterson, after years of non-contention, is now expected to make a run at the historic trifecta: a City Championship, a Regional Championship, and a State Championship. During a recent visit to Baltimore, a fall league game revealed a team just beginning to gel, hustling to prepare for a demanding travel schedule and high expectations, as well as the scrutiny that comes with increased exposure.

But amidst great expectations for its season, Patterson was taking a beating at the hands of rival St. Frances. Carr fumed. A whistle blew, and Carr, already frayed thanks to a number of no-calls on the other end, stomped back toward the foul stripe from under the basket, leering at the official. A family friend walked onto the floor to escort Carr to the locker room. It's unclear if he was officially ejected, but he was certainly asked to leave the game. Carr eventually returned to the bench, but not to the game, his head hung low, a towel draped over his neck, obscuring his face. After the game, a sullen-looking Patterson squad sat in a darkened hallway, still in their uniforms, looking a little lost, adrift as the team's coaches berated them.

"I let y'all do today your way," said Coach Darrick Oliver, father of backup point guard Dereck. "And look what happened. Now we're gonna do it my way." Theodoric Bell, one of Patterson's assistants during the regular season, followed Oliver. "Y'all are playing a national schedule this season! A national schedule."

The Patterson players sat together in silence, Aquille drooped over in a chair looking at his feet. It was the look of a team acknowledging just how much pressure was on them, and simultaneously realizing the potent, real threat of failure.

No one in Baltimore is quite sure when Aquille Carr became known as "The Crime Stopper."

Maybe it was during his freshman season, when he scored 39 points and dished 19 assists against powerhouse Lake Clifton and Josh Selby, the nation's top recruit.

Maybe it was that same season, when Carr dunked over Baltimore City College High's Nick Faust on a play that Baltimore Sun beatwriter Glenn Graham christened "The dunk heard 'round Baltimore." At the time, Faust was 6'3''. Carr was 5'5".

"He had very little help around him that first year," says Graham, a 20-year veteran at the Sun who's been on the basketball beat for the last four. "You were just thinking he was going to lay it up strong off of the backboard, but he just kept going and going. Before you know it, he slammed it. And it was just about the most incredible thing I've ever seen, as far as anything I've ever covered."

Maybe it was the 57 points he hung on Forest Park, the 11th-ranked team in the city last year, breaking a Patterson record that stood for 50 years. Carr hit seven threes in that game.

Or maybe it wasn't even on the basketball court. When Bell coached Carr in Pop Warner, Carr missed the first two games. But like Allen Iverson, another diminutive basketball talent with surprising football skills, missing a couple games didn't stop him from scoring 33 touchdowns that season.

Or, maybe it was the time a regional All-Star game was called with a minute and a half left after a spectacular play by Carr.

"He takes the ball down the right side and is getting a little physical with the guy who's guarding him, and he just crosses him over—the most ridiculous crossover I've ever seen—and the kid literally falls on the floor. [Carr] steps back and drains a long-range jumper," says Sun writer Matt Bracken, who runs the sports section's web site. "The place just erupts. And the guy at the scorer's table stands up and is like, 'That's it! I'm calling it.' There's time on the clock left and he was like, 'There's no topping that.'"

In the third season of HBO's byzantine crime drama The Wire, police officers accuse Police Chief Ervin Burrell of "juking the stats," essentially finding ways to manufacture statistics that would make crime appear to be decrease in the city to help crooked Mayor Royce get re-elected. Burrell could have used Aquille Carr. His singular nickname, The Crime Stopper, stems from the notion that so many people are coming out to the phenom's games that illegal activity in America's most infamously crime-ridden city pauses. It's a weighty name for an 18-year-old, but even Aquille's father, Alan, acknowledges that some of his son's biggest fans are, in fact, criminals.

"I know a lot of guys, a lot of guys that sell drugs," the elder Carr, 49, says. "A lot of them stop for two hours just to go see him play. There's a lot of guys that do that—that's why they named him that. He's just a well-liked kid."

While Aquille's dazzling floor game demands a kind of reverence — envision a small, agile guard pinballing around the floor on both ends, finishing drives with a jaw-dropping leap—he's already put together a staggering resumé for a player entering his junior year. After a freshman year that re-established dormant Patterson as a player in city hoops, Carr led the school to a City Championship, and then the state title game against North Point, where they lost 76–72. In a recent All-Star game, the Boost Mobile Elite 24 played in Venice, CA, a game he almost didn't play in due to some waffling from the Maryland Public Secondary Schools Athletic Association, Carr posted a 21-point, 10-assist, 7-rebound performance that further established his big-game prowess.

You don't have to stay in Baltimore to hear a good Aquille Carr story. As the starting point guard for U.S.A. Basketball's U-19 team in an international tournament, Carr went for 45 points—he averaged an even 40 for the tourney in a gold-medal effort—and was carried off the court by Italian supporters, who like their heroes diminutive and fiery. Lottomatica Virtus Roma, the same team that signed Milwaukee Bucks point guard Brandon Jennings to a million-dollar deal out of high school, was rumored to have offered Carr a contract worth $750,000 this spring, when he was still a sophomore. (According to the Carrs, Lottomatica Virtus Roma's $750,000 offer is still on the table. Virtus Roma's manager, Bogdan Tanjevic, has denied this claim.)

But in a city that stakes its civic pride on its impressive roster of basketball stars, Aquille Carr isn't built physically like previous metro-area hoops legends Carmelo Anthony and Kevin Durant. He weighs 140 pounds. Though he's listed at 5'8'', locals know he measures in at least two inches shorter. His small stature has been an advantage at times; it's branded him an unlikely hero, a role Carr seems to relish.

"Whatever you say he can't do, he does," his father says. "He blocks it out. That's how Aquille takes a lot of stuff. He likes to be the underdog."

It's easy for both purists and casual fans to get behind Carr's game, which consists of blinding slashes to the bucket and deft, patient dribble breakdowns of a defense's weaknesses. He's a Wow player. Though many more in College Park or Lexington or Waco will be singing the Crime Stopper's praises, Baltimore has stood behind him as long as he's been playing, including men's league games where a not-yet-teenage Carr held his own against his father and his friends.

"When someone rises to the level that Carr has, [Baltimore's] basketball community, which is extremely tight-knit, completely rallies and gets behind that person," Bracken says. "I think certainly he's had a lot of support in that regard."

In fact, Carr has already won over many of the same players he looks up to—some dote on the pride of Baltimore.

"I first heard about him on Twitter, someone sent me a link about Carr and how good he was," says Brandon Jennings, who got to know from workouts at St. Frances Academy. "The things he does on the court are amazing for a player his size."

Durant, a long, rangy player, already sees the advantages—tangible and not—of Carr's size.

"When we were growing up we were surrounded by five projects," Bogues says. "It was a grind, it was tough. Everybody had that swagger going on in that city. Even as a kid, being my size, I had to just be among the rest of the guys. And that's where my attitude and my confidence and my ability to learn the game came from. In Baltimore, you gotta have that swagger. And that's what Aquille has."

Though Carr, as one might expect from a teenager fish-hooked from Phys Ed to talk to a reporter, was somewhat short with his responses when we talked, he was still cheerful and direct.

"People overlook me because I'm little," Carr says. "They'll be like, you can't do this, you can't do that. I just prove 'em wrong."

He comes from a tight family, which includes his older brother Alan Jr., a former football star at Lake Clifton, his sister Ashley, who just graduated from Towson University, and his parents, Alan Sr. and mother, Tammy. In an environment consisting of so many broken homes, the Carrs routinely hang together, hitting the movies, bowling, and dining out together on special occasions.

"Family means everything to him," Alan Sr. says. "All we got is us."

It's no coincidence that Baltimore has been a breeding ground for Division I basketball players—according to Martin, approximately 20 D-I players come out of the Baltimore metro area each year.

But it's not all love; since all players in Baltimore play with an edge hardened by the environment and high competitive level of city hoops, people in the community can also grow to resent Aquille's successes.

"Just coming out of that city prepares you for a lot of levels," Bogues says. "A kid walking around in that city, they think they're better than Aquille. That's the crazy thing about it. That's just how the attitude is around there."

In a sense, Carr is a sheltered player; while his family makes the final decision, all things recruitment or press-related are routed through Coach Martin. Though he coexists in this famously rough environment, he's built a functional mechanism around him that increases his odds of success. Given that trouble teems in many corners of Baltimore, common knowledge suggests that if you just keep your head down and focus on basketball, like so many others have done, you'll be able to break out of the city limits. Staying in Baltimore is still a risk, however; many top-tier recruits elect to spend a year or two at basketball prep-school powerhouses like New Hampshire's Brewster Academy (Baltimore's Will Barton, Selby's cousin, elected for this path and now stars at Memphis) or Virginia's Oak Hill Academy.

"A lot of people leaving the city altogether and going to prep school," Bracken says. "It's so extraordinarily rare for someone of his level to not only stay in Baltimore, but to stay at a public school that was completely off the radar before he got there."
The day after being tossed from the exhibition game, I met a photographer for a photo shoot on an outdoor court in Carr's neighborhood in East Baltimore—where it quickly became clear that the 18-year-old casts a long shadow. While preparing the lighting, a neighborhood kid approached and asked what was happening. When told about an Aquille Carr photo shoot, the kid's eyes went wide and he bolted home.

An hour later, in front of half the neighborhood, Carr showed up with a cluster of friends in a pair of Elite 24 shorts, smiling. Some of his friends sported matching "Most Wanted" tattoos. He immediately apologized for the kerfuffle at last night's game.

"I'm sorry that was the one you had to come to," he said, smiling.

The yard that day was packed with ballplayers on two freshly paved courts, thick triple rims adorning ivory squares of plaster that created a glare. A man holding a can of Steel Reserve walked down and commented on how great it was that these courts were here. "Think about what else these kids would be doing if there weren't these courts here," he said, before sauntering off.

Three Under Armour reps showed up with Patterson's new practice apparel, including custom gear printed up with "Crime Stopper" emblazoned on the front. His brother's attempts at merchandising—a gray hoodie with "Crime Stopper" on the front and a reproduction of one of Aquille's tattoos on the back—hung on a nearby chain-link fence. When Alan told him to put it on, Aquille feigned disgust. A few older guys from the neighborhood leaned on a fence near an embankment 10 feet above the courts; one yelled, "Don't forget where you came up, Aquille!" as Carr repeated crossover after crossover in front of the camera.

That unseasonably warm afternoon drove neighborhood teens across two full courts, and as the throngs packed the playground, the crowd grew restless. On the other court, a five-on-five game bounded up and down, the roster ranging from middle school might-bes to middle-aged never-was-es. One baller took a pull off a Swisher Sweet while receiving passes with his other hand, effortlessly balancing both.

Baltimore's legacy as a hoops city is permanently defined by a long line of undersized, supernaturally tough guards. Before Aquille came Juan Dixon, who took the University of Maryland to a national title. Before Dixon came Sam Cassell. Before Cassell came Muggsy Bogues, and before Bogues came Skip Wise, maybe the best of them all. But right now, Aquille Carr is the one who makes the city stop when he moves with the ball, a focal point in a town banking on his every move.

"He can break you down," says Durant. "He's small, but he can score on anybody. He has amazing athletic ability and he has heart. You gotta respect a player like that, no matter how small he is."

Though recently drafted Memphis Grizzlies guard and former Kansas star Josh Selby refuted the fact that Carr outscored him in their famous matchup—Selby should probably revisit that box score—he sees big things for a player that he refers to as his little brother.

"The first time I met Aquille he was probably 12. I said, that's a small version of me!" Selby says. "So I fell in love with the kid's game from there. He has the talent to play in the NBA. As long as he continues to grow I can't see how he's not lottery."

Muggsy Bogues, the beloved Baltimore-bred 5'3'' former Charlotte Hornets guard that Carr regularly cites as a player he looks up to, relates to the young player's circumstances.

Dwyane Wade's Five Steps to Off-Court Style

1. My Throwback Tweed Look
"To wear a gray tweed suit, you have to be mature and confident in yourself. Some people can't pull it off. My thing is that I always want to do something to pop my outfit. The sweater adds that punch of color, and the driving cap grabs attention."

• Wade swears by these body-hugging V-neck sweaters, which he layers with a suit or pulls on alone after a game.

Suit jacket, $1,795, pants, $695, sweater, $475, and shirt, $475, by Yves Saint Laurent. Tie, $185 by Gucci. Watch by Hublot. Cap by Bailey of Hollywood.

2. I'm Feeling the Double-Breasted Right Now
"I told my stylist that I wanted her to throw something different at me, and she brought me double-breasted suits. At first I wasn't feeling it, but when we went to the fashion shows in Milan, it clicked: I can rock it. You're going to see more DBs from me."

• Some guys are content to wear a suit the old-fashioned way, but Wade is all about personal touches like pocket squares and pushed-up sleeves.

Suit, $1,995, and sneakers, $495, by Yves Saint Laurent. Sweater, $735 by Gucci. Sunglasses by Salvatore Ferragamo. Pocket square by Tom Ford. Socks by Falke.

3. A Little Chest Showing
Like Brad Pitt
"If I had to wear one suit for the rest of my life, it'd be this right here. No tie gives you that suave, sexy Brad Pitt feel."

Suit, $1,295, and shirt, $195, by Emporio Armani. Belt by Louis Vuitton.

4. The Look That Says
I'm a Grown Man
"A turtleneck is about sophistication. You have to be confident to wear one, and trust me, I got this."

Sports jacket, $1,625, and turtleneck, $795, by Dolce & Gabbana. Jeans, $165 by J Brand. Loafers, $530, and bag by Gucci

5. I Can Sit Down with a CEO
"A Tom Ford three-piece makes you feel so confident, it's bananas. I can walk into a meeting with this; I can sit down with a CEO. The patterned shirt and the pocket square make people do a double take—and that's always what I'm looking for."

• A three-piece and an expensive watch make a splash, but the key to this look is the patterned shirt.

Three-piece suit, $4,370, shirt, $560, tie, $200, and pocket square, $145, by Tom Ford. Watch by Hublot.

Jeremy Lin: "He's a Lot Like Tim Tebow"

During his brief but wondrous stretch of national superstardom, Jeremy Lin has given us only glimpses of himself, through his on-court conduct and humble postgame comments. Naturally, we want to know more. Hurried by the potentially short-lived apex of Linsanity, GQ contacted old friends, guys he'd studied, played, and lived with, to get the truth about the 23-year-old Harvard grad-turned-Knicks savior during his formative years. The result? Jeremy Lin is, by most accounts, a spotless athlete with a compelling story, a consistent winning record, and a deep commitment to the Christian faith. Kind of reminds you of someone, doesn't it?

For such an underestimated athlete—Lin famously mailed highlight DVDs of himself to college coaches and still failed to acquire an athletic scholarship to play basketball—it isn't surprising that things weren't any easier for Lin upon his arrival at Harvard in 2006 from California's Palo Alto High School. Patrick Magnarelli, a college teammate of Lin's, recalls the difficulty that freshman class had adjusting to life in the college ranks. "We all thought we were going to come in there and be the Fab Five," Magnarelli says. But between upperclassman incumbency and adapting to the college game, Lin played a paltry 18 minutes a game (still more than any other freshman) despite a physique that was a far cry from his current 6'3 and 200 lbs. frame.

"He was by far the weakest person on the team," says Alek Blankenau, a fellow freshman recruit who, like Lin, experienced bouts of discouragement and homesickness that first year. It wasn't until their sophomore season, when Lin was named a starter by new head coach Tommy Amaker, that Harvard basketball began their slow crawl into the spotlight.

So what were those years like in the run-up to Harvard's tournament-qualifying run in 2009-10? One can imagine any number of juicy subplots. After all, isn't it pretty much the job of talented young athletes to behave recklessly, aggravate local police, and disgrace the NCAA? Asked about the innocuous nature of this portrait of Lin, Blankenau was at a loss for dirt to dish: "I hate to say it, but he's kind of a wholesome guy."

Some facts about the Real J. Lin:

• He is the consummate teammate, and then some. Magnarelli was often injured, missing their entire junior season with an ailing knee. "[Jeremy] went and asked the team nutritionist what foods I should be eating, to recover better," he says.

• Lin is indeed a devout Christian—he held a regular Bible study group in the dorms he shared with Magnarelli, Blankenau, and others—but is more open-armed inclusionary rather than evangelical browbeater, the type who invites you to church, and, should you not be interested, shrugs it off with a smiling "No sweat, dude."

• He is, of all things, deathly afraid of needles. "We had to get flu shots," remembers Blankenau, "and he was like, 'I can't do this.' I had to convince him not to duck out a side door. That's the most uncollected I've ever seen him."

• Lin had a similarly devout girlfriend in college, and they parted on amicable terms. "Jeremy forgot to make reservations on Valentine's Day once, and had to save the day with some homemade chicken parm," says Blankenau.

Eric Lee, a fellow economics major who lived with Lin, could have promised a different perspective, to no avail. Asked to identify Lin's demons, or so much as a class in which he struggled, Lee instead told of a time at an In-N-Out Burger in San Francisco, while he was a member of the Golden State Warriors. "We walk past this homeless guy, and I would've just ignored him," Lee says. "But [Jeremy] goes up to him and asks, 'Hey man, what do you want?' And he gets him a double-double and an order of fries."

What about his party habits? "He'd always manage to surprise me on my birthday," Lee says. "Every year, he'd just always find a way." Then, when pressed about whether Lin has ever had a drink, Lee gave a reluctant admission: "I mean...to say he never has would be...lying."

Breakthrough!

Until: "Honestly...I hate to say it, but he's a lot like Tim Tebow," Lee concluded.

The comparison between two Christian athletes overcoming setbacks and defying critics has been made often, and isn't at all cursory. In December, when Lin was riding the pine for the Knicks while surfing his brother's couch, an old friend tried to make the connection real. Cheng Ho, a former running back for Harvard's football team and member of Lin's bible study group, now working to promote the NFL's overseas efforts in China, tried to pull some strings to introduce Lin to the Broncos QB. The fateful meeting never panned out, but Ho was forthcoming about the racial stereotyping he and Lin faced: "I'm fortunate that I wear a helmet, so people don't see me." Ho and Lin often discussed resisting the pitfalls of higher education. "With college life being about drinking and talking to girls, we talked a lot about controlling our temptations, how to be godly, and what to do not to fall into that vicious cycle."

Tim Tebow was a high-school All-American and top college recruit, then a Heisman winner, national champion, and thanks to the inscrutable mind of then-coach Josh McDaniels, a first-round NFL draft pick. Even if the Broncos hadn't pulled the trigger on Tebow several rounds too early, he might still have gotten his shot at NFL quarterbacking. Lin has had to fight tooth-and-nail to gain entry to the next level—and, arguably, has played better and needed considerably less luck to win at it. What's more, Lin has the opportunity to be a socio-cultural phenomenon in ways Tebow cannot.

Lakers guard Derek Fisher, after being demolished in last week's Knicks-Lakers game, said Lin is "carrying the hopes of an entire continent." That might overestimate the power of a Taiwanese kid from Palo Alto, but there is a reason thousands turned out to see him play in his rookie season with the Golden State Warriors before he'd ever scored a point. It's the same reason my mother e-mails me articles about Lin when she doesn't know what the "Knicks" are. As Ho says, "Basketball has always been a platform for him to find comfort and confidence, to be a good example and make a difference." But can it last? And can Lin really be this squeaky-clean? Nobody knows, but at this moment, he's already done more than enough to make a difference for Ho and countless others. "People have their own biases and expectations, and he's just shattering them right now," he says. "Shattering them. And I'm loving it. I'm absolutely loving it."

Blindsided: The Jerry Joseph Basketball Scandal

He said he didn't really know what day he was born. His parents were both dead before he turned 5, he said, and he'd never celebrated a birthday in his life. But Jerry Joseph's birth certificate read January 1, so on New Year's Day 2010, his family gathered around him. It would be a new year, a new decade, a celebration of Jerry's brand-new life. There were flimsy cardboard hats and streamers and wrapped gifts. Jerry, who at six feet five and 220 pounds was several inches taller than anyone else in his adoptive family, was presented a white cake adorned with candles in the shape of a 1 and a 6.

Danny Wright, the 50-year-old basketball coach who had taken Jerry in a few months before, noticed the kid get misty-eyed, just as he had at his first Christmas a week earlier. When his wife saw Jerry crying, she too was moved to tears. Wright stood by as his five children, none of them his own biologically, surrounded their new brother. The youngest, a 2-year-old adopted girl named Ariana, crawled into Jerry's giant arms. They sang the boy a song, told him to make a wish. It's a moment Wright keeps coming back to, when Jerry closed his bright brown eyes. What could the boy have wished for? he wonders. Basketball glory, maybe, and untold riches in the pros. But if Wright had to guess, he'd say Jerry offered a more solemn prayer: that if this life somehow turned out to be a dream, he'd never feel a pinch—that he'd never wake up in another world.

At the far edge of the oil-rich Permian Basin, the rust-colored town of Odessa, Texas, is profoundly dedicated to two things: church and football. The only mall in town has an oversize tablet of the Ten Commandments on permanent display; the city's 19,000-seat stadium plays host to the champion Permian Panthers, the high school football team that lured Buzz Bissinger down Interstate 20 over two decades ago to write Friday Night Lights.

Jerry Joseph showed up here on a Greyhound in February 2009, carrying little more than a birth certificate and a duffel bag of old clothes. He'd been homeless in Haiti, he said, and stowed away on a boat to Florida. The good Christians of Odessa welcomed the stranger like a lost soul. Danny Wright, a sharply pressed figure who could be mistaken for a minister, took him into his home, gave him a bed alongside his 16-year-old son. And just like the man-child in The Blind Side—which was still playing at the local theater—Jerry rewarded the love he received, becoming a good student, a dedicated Christian, and a dominant force on the court.

"We're nice people here," says Roy Garcia, the principal at Odessa's Permian High School. "Good people with good hearts. That's what makes this place what it is." Garcia first met Jerry one afternoon in late February, when the boy walked into his school looking to register for ninth grade. He was with a man he introduced as his half brother. Garcia, who jokes that he looks like a Hispanic Super Mario, remembers Jerry vividly, even among the 2,500 kids at Permian. It wasn't just his height. He was full around the chest; his face was thick. "Like, well, like a full-grown man," he says. At first the principal assumed Jerry's companion—whose name, he later learned, was Jabari Caldwell—was the registering student. But it didn't matter, he explained, because in the Odessa school district, ninth grade is at the junior high.

Down the road at Nimitz Junior High, Jerry presented a Haitian birth certificate verifying he was born in 1994. He explained that Caldwell was his legal guardian, that they'd be staying in the dorms at nearby University of Texas of the Permian Basin (UTPB), where Caldwell was on the basketball team. Caldwell signed an affidavit saying he was Jerry's half brother, and as is the law for any child who is homeless or has only temporary lodging, the boy was enrolled immediately.

Basketball coach Melvon Anders was in the Nimitz gym a few days later and saw Jerry take his shirt off. "I was like, Jee-sus Christ!" he says. The kid had all sorts of tattoos, inflated pecs, and shoulders like a racehorse. He'd never met a freshman like him. Then again, plenty of kids have tattoos these days, and this kind of early development is not unheard of, especially in basketball. When LeBron James was 16 and already nationally known, he could have passed for 24. As a junior in high school, Greg Oden looked like a middle-aged man.

The coach kept an eye on Jerry when classes started. Most kids that size are magnets for fistfights, but in his four months at Nimitz, Jerry never got into a single one, unless you count the brawl he broke up before it started. He was studious, a hard worker—"a pleasure to have in class, actually," Anders says. Despite never attending a school of any kind in Haiti—which of course meant no school records to transfer in—Jerry breezed through his accelerated "catch-up" curriculum. He explained that when he was little, his relatives brought him textbooks from the United States. He had a slight accent but spoke English well. A few of the teachers joked that Jerry was secretly an adult. Once a teacher mistook him for a substitute.

Jerry had a beautiful wide smile and what nearly everyone describes as an exotic "swagger." He skipped down the halls when he thought nobody was watching. With his headphones on, he would sway and sing—sometimes in Creole—lost in a world all his own. If anybody asked, he explained he was living in the dorm with his brother because his parents were dead. With an answer like that, nobody asked much more. Plus, once you watched him play ball, it was hard to think of anything else. Coach Anders saw him up close in a spring student-faculty game. "We were out there stretching, and he ran up to the other rim and threw down this monster dunk," he says. "I've never seen a 15-year-old do that. I've had kids taller than him, and they still can't dunk like that."

When the coach asked the boy where he learned to hoop, Jerry said he'd seen the game on television and played a little on the streets of Haiti. Anders wondered if maybe the kid wasn't some kind of prodigy.

At Nimitz, Jerry never asked for a handout, which, of course, made people all the more willing to help. That summer, when school let out, some of the coaches recommended him for a job in the concession stand at the public pool. Melvon Anders supervised him. Jerry was popular with the teenage girls, a good employee—never late, never snapped at anyone, never had any money missing from his register. One dry-roasted day in August, someone asked him about his home, and Jerry pulled up Google maps on an iPhone. He showed a group, Anders included, a mountain in Haiti where he grew up. He said that most of his life was spent herding goats. They all listened dumbstruck. Goats? A hut on a mountainside? "Who were we to question his story," Anders says. "He was the first Haitian most of us had ever met."


Divonte Wallace and Demorri Wilkerson remember meeting Jerry that summer at the UTPB gym, where the best area players gather for pickup games. Divonte and Demorri grew up in Odessa, balling on playgrounds and at the Boys & Girls Club. They were on JV together the past two seasons: Demorri was a defensive specialist, Divonte a rail-thin six-foot shooting guard who perfected his form with 250 jump shots a day.

This year, Divonte says, a few colleges were looking to recruit him. Nowhere huge—just some schools around San Antonio—but still, usually recruiters only came to Odessa for football. Things would be different this season. "This was going to be our year," Divonte says. The day Divonte and Demorri met him, Jerry unleashed a 360 dunk over a mesmerized player. "When I heard he was going to play for Permian, I thought it was like a sign from God that we were going to win state," Demorri says.

It wasn't long before Danny Wright heard reports about the six-foot-five wunderkind. The former director of the Boys & Girls Club, Wright is more than just a coach in Odessa. Dozens of kids in town call him Dad or Pops. Many have lived with him; he can't remember if it's seventeen or eighteen. The oldest of five in a single-mother household, Wright has been taking care of kids his whole life. It's why God put him on this earth.

On their first meeting, Wright was struck by Jerry's confidence. He asked the boy to dinner and introduced him to the rest of the family. He explained that he has no problem helping kids, but only the ones who really want to improve their lives. "I've had a lot of kids stay with me," Wright told Jerry, "but I didn't ask one of them."

The timing of that dinner couldn't have been better. A few days later, Jerry called Coach Wright with his own housing crisis. His half brother was going back to Florida; Jerry asked Wright if he could stay with him. Coach gave Jerry the usual spiel: my house, my rules. "Everyone helps out," he told him. "If I come in and see leaves on the porch, I know you saw those same leaves. I shouldn't have to come in and tell someone to sweep them." In Wright's house, kids are kids and the adults are adults, and there would never be any confusion on that.

He told Jerry he could sleep in the same room as his stepson Dominique, who was also on the Permian basketball team. Did Wright ask Dominique how he felt about the idea of sharing his room?

"Why would I do that?"

···

Everybody thinks about it at some point: What life would be like if we were given a second chance, a fresh start in a place where nobody knows our past. Jerry began his first year at Permian on a mission, running to school from Coach's house. Lots of people saw him out there in the hot August sun. Three miles each way, jogging through the streets like he was Rocky or something.

Just as he had at the junior high, he excelled in his classes. At one point, his Spanish teacher singled out Jerry, an immigrant with less than a year of total schooling. He started seeing a girl, a tenth grader on the dance team, whom he'd met at Nimitz. His teammates saw them together in the halls once in a while, but he didn't like to talk about her. He was all about basketball.

When the season started in November, the Panthers basketball team looked better than anything Permian had assembled in years. They were big, with six players at least six feet four. Jerry didn't begin the season as a starter. But when the team dropped three of four games—each by only a few points—Coach Wright pulled Divonte Wallace, the sharpshooter. He told him there were going to be a few people changing positions to make room for Jerry, who would now be starting at point guard. "I'm not gonna lie," says Divonte. "It hurt. But I was all about the team, whatever's best for the team."

Jerry rewarded his coach with a giant game in early December against district rival San Angelo Central. Just seconds into the first quarter, he snatched the ball and drove the length of the court, throwing down what several teammates describe as a "gorilla slam." "It was a moment you could just feel in the air," says Demorri Wilkerson. "That was it. We were on our way." On the bus ride home after the win, they felt like all those great Permian football teams must have felt: like champions in wait.

The gym was soon packed for every home game. Fans remarked that with his flat-top haircut and the way he always seemed drenched in sweat, Jerry looked a little like Boobie Miles, the star-crossed running back from the Friday Night Lights season. The seniors invited Jerry to hang out with them at the back of the bus. They called him Grandpa and the Haitian Sensation. He'd get to school early to shoot around and stay late to impart his basketball IQ. "If Jerry told you something, it wouldn't be wrong," says a teammate. "He knew the game like a coach." When a player relied too much on one hand, he told them to go an entire practice using only their off hand. That, he said, is what gave him such a powerful crossover. Just when you knew where Jerry was going, he went in a completely new direction.

···

In the days between Christmas and Jerry's sixteenth birthday, the team traveled to Lubbock for the Caprock Classic, a statewide competition in which Permian normally struggled. But this year the team breezed to the semifinals, where, down by three with 2.1 seconds left, Coach drew up a play to get the ball to Jerry. After curling around a screen, he took the pass, left his feet, and released the shot all in one fluid motion. The ball seemed to dangle as the clock ran out, gently floating toward the rim, until...the entire gym exploded. Fans and parents leapt from their seats. Jerry stood there, awestruck. His teammates piled on top of him. Coach Wright, in his eternal sobriety, reminded his players that Jerry's buzzer beater merely sent the game into overtime: "We still have a game to play here, gentlemen!" They went on to lose that game and the third-place contest, too—but in the end, nobody could forget that shot.

Back in Odessa, Jerry's roots were growing. He asked teammates about their church youth group at Mission Dorado, a Baptist church on the eastern outskirts of town with a sign that proclaims A FELLOWSHIP OF EXCITEMENT. Jerry liked it there, and soon it wasn't just Sundays. There were Wednesday services, Bible studies, group prayers. "Very quickly he became a regular fixture," says Philip Skelton, who was the church's pastor at the time.

One day Jerry approached Skelton with a request: He wanted to be baptized. The pastor responded with a dinner invitation. "I don't want to baptize someone without them realizing what's going on," he says. Over steaks at the Golden Corral, Skelton explained to Jerry that when he plunged into that water, his old life would end. When he emerged, he would be reborn in Christ. Jerry told the pastor that was exactly what he wanted. "He gave all the right answers."

At church, an older couple gave Jerry small amounts of cash so he could go to the movies. They talked about getting him a car. The entire town, it seemed, was falling in love with Jerry. After the January 2010 earthquake that leveled Port-au-Prince, the Odessa American ran a feature dedicated entirely to the town's Haitian import. "I didn't go looking for Jerry," Wright told the paper. "And Jerry didn't come looking for me. I believe God sent him here, and he sent him here for a reason."

The Haitian Sensation went on to average more than twenty points a game for Permian. The team went 16-13 and finished fourth in the district, the best season in Coach Wright's five-year tenure. In the playoffs, they were matched up with one of the district's best, the El Paso Americas. The lanky Americas dominated from the start with a stunning alley-oop and a barrage of unanswered threes. By halftime, Permian down by eighteen, the game was out of reach. Jerry scored only eleven points and accounted for most of the team's twenty-four turnovers. A few of the seniors, their basketball careers over, cried in the locker room. Despite his performance, Jerry was named the district's Newcomer of the Year.

After the season, the recruiting letters starting showing up. Coaches from big programs all over the country had heard of the combo power-forward/point-guard. There was a new piece of recruiting mail for Jerry every single day. "Texas Tech was ready to take him," says Wright. "They wanted him bad."

Jerry kept practicing. He played in a series of travel tournaments with an AAU team from New Mexico, one of the best in the region. If he thought he'd miss church, he made sure to e-mail Pastor Skelton saying he'd be thinking of them.

One weekend in April, he was playing at the Real Deal in the Rock, a massive AAU tournament in Little Rock that draws the best high school players—and plenty of college scouts—from all over the nation. In the middle of one of Jerry's games, a group of players and coaches from a Florida team gathered at the edge of the court. Some of them were laughing. They watched as one of their coaches approached Jerry.

"Hey, Guerd, what's going on?" the coach said. "What you doin' here?"

The players saw Jerry look back over his shoulder. "Sir, I don't know you," he said and hurried off, shaking his head.

···

Louis Vives swears he knows the guy he saw that day in Arkansas, but he'd never heard the name Jerry Joseph. He knew him as Guerdwich Montimere, a kid who'd played around Florida for years. "He walked just like him," says Vives, the president of the South Florida Elite basketball club. "He talked like him. He played like him. He even sweat like him. This kid used to sweat like someone poured water on him."

When the team went for sandwiches later that day, Vives's players joked that they were going to find aliases when they turned 21 so they could keep playing. But that night at the hotel, Vives got to thinking. He Googled the New Mexico squad. He found the Permian roster, along with stories about Jerry's success in Texas. He thought about how strange it was, the idea of a 22-year-old man walking around with a bunch of high school kids. What would they talk about? What would they do? Then he thought about what high school kids do. The coach has a teenage daughter himself. He couldn't sleep that night. This whole thing wasn't so funny anymore.

When Vives's team got back to Florida, word of the Guerdwich sighting spread quickly. "He was definitely the talk of the town down here," Vives says. A former AAU coach started looking up other Permian players. He found Divonte Wallace's MySpace page and on it a phone number.

Divonte was sitting on his couch watching TV with Demorri on a Saturday afternoon when he got the call. The adult voice on the other end asked if he went to Permian, if he knew Jerry. Divonte was initially concerned about narcing on his friend and said he went to crosstown Odessa High School. "Just have Jerry call me," the coach replied.

Divonte immediately rang Jerry, who asked him to call the guy back on three-way, concealing Jerry's number. Divonte tried not to listen in after that, but really, how could he not? He remembers hearing the coach calling Jerry by a strange name and saying, "What the hell are you doing?" Then Jerry: "Look, I don't know you." He heard Jerry ask the guy to stop contacting him.

Permian administrators started receiving anonymous tips suggesting they look into Jerry's background. Similar messages went to the Odessa American. Principal Roy Garcia got a series of e-mails and voice mails. He started amassing evidence: Turns out Jabari Caldwell, the man who'd said he was Jerry's half brother, wasn't related to him at all. Caldwell, in fact, had been teammates with Montimere in Florida. Garcia compared photos. There weren't a lot of pictures of Montimere available, but the ones he found looked a lot like Jerry—though it was hard to be certain three years on.

Garcia called Jerry to his office, confronting him with what he'd found. Jerry insisted that he was who he said he was. "I talked to him for hours," Garcia says. "As a principal, getting kids to confess is part of my job. But this guy never broke. He never wavered once." Garcia eventually pulled Jerry from off-season workouts "just to be safe."

As rumors spread around Odessa, people started talking: Was Jerry really some 22-year-old? The Wright household circled around its newest member. Divonte called Jerry again to ask him man-to-man. Jerry denied it, told him not to worry, that this would all blow over soon.

On April 29, two weeks after the tournament in Little Rock, the principal called Coach Wright and Jerry into his office. He had something for them both to see.

There on Garcia's desk were two new photos next to each other. On the left was Jerry in a white Permian uniform, playing defense: His right arm was extended, his brow furrowed, his lips open and puckered ever so slightly in a moment of concentration. On the right was Montimere in a blue Dillard uniform, playing defense: His right arm was extended, his brow furrowed, and his lips parted in the same expression.

"This is you," Coach Wright said, barely able to contain his anger.

"That ain't me," Jerry said.

"Look," Wright said, leaning in, "I'm not asking for confirmation. I'm telling you. I don't know what you're pulling, but you need to get your things and be on your way."

Wright stepped out of the office to call his wife, Jimmie. He told her to look through Jerry's bags. She didn't want to, but Wright insisted. Sure enough, there in his duffel bag, she found it: a passport for "Guerdwich Montimer." Jimmie didn't want to believe it. She cried into the phone. Wright searched desperately for the right words to comfort her. Those words never came.

Principal Garcia turned over everything to the Odessa PD and to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Jerry earnestly maintained that the passport wasn't his, that he'd gotten it from an uncle, and within a few hours ICE officials came forward with news that shocked everyone: Jerry Joseph, they informed the school district, was definitely not Guerdwich Montimere. The specifics of their investigation were never made public (and ICE has refused to comment), but officials told principal Garcia that they'd run Jerry's fingerprints through the FBI database and had come up empty.

Despite the evidence against him, Jerry was allowed back in school. "When the United States government tells me he isn't this other guy, who am I to argue with them?" Garcia says. Still, there was another problem. Since Jerry was here illegally and didn't have a guardian in the United States, ICE said, he would have to be deported. While Coach Wright felt betrayed that Jerry had lied about his half brother, he figured the kid was desperate. He volunteered to adopt the boy. His wife agreed. "We didn't have to think twice," he says. "You just do."

···

Like Jerry, Guerdwich Montimere was born in Haiti. His mother, Manikisse Montimere, says the boy's father died while she was pregnant with Guerdwich and his fraternal twin, Guerdwin—who stands about five inches shorter and has a much rounder face. They were born on Febru­ary 23, 1988. Unable to find work, Manikisse left Haiti and moved in with a network of aunts, uncles, and cousins in Florida in 1994, the year that would later appear on Jerry Joseph's birth certificate.

Manikisse and Guerdwin still live together outside Fort Lauderdale, in a small white house with red-tile shingles, an American flag flying over their perfectly manicured front yard. An employee at an auto-parts store, Manikisse has short glossy hair, bright brown eyes, and a beautiful wide smile that disappears immediately when the topic of Guerdwich comes up. It's just too painful, she says.

His childhood was "typical," a happy kid, plenty of friends, nothing particularly traumatic. She took her sons to a Baptist church whenever she could. Throughout middle and high school, Guerdwich's grades were poor, but always good enough to keep him eligible for athletics. "That's all he did for a long time," says his uncle Wilner Montimere. "Anytime you saw him, he always had a ball in his hand."

Vives, the AAU coach, started recruiting Guerdwich when he was 16. During his senior year at Dillard, the team made it to the state semifinals, and Guerdwich was a McDonald's All-American nominee. "He was a good, hardworking kid," Vives remembers. "Always polite, always driven." But on a team of stars, he didn't have the size, the stats, and especially not the grades to stand out to scouts. He ended up at Highland Community College in Freeport, Illinois. But when he was redshirted until his grades improved, Guerdwich left school before a single game.

Back in Florida, living with his mother, Guerdwich was clearly depressed. They fought constantly. She would press him about his future, where he was going to go to school, what he would study. He'd say that he wasn't giving up on basketball; she'd fire back that he was living in a dream world. Before long, one of these arguments turned nasty. She says she can't bear to repeat what they said to each other. "It was just...just...awful."

And that was the end. Guerdwich thundered out and didn't come home that night. Or the next. Some of his former Dillard teammates say they heard he went to Haiti sometime in early 2008, but nobody can say for sure. His mother says she hasn't seen him since the fight.

···

The coaches in Florida were persistent. There were more e-mails, more newspaper stories. Under pressure, ICE continued its investigation. Ten days after clearing Jerry, the agency turned up damning evidence: a hard copy of Montimere's immigration file with fingerprints—taken before the agency converted to an electronic database. The prints were a match.

Jerry was arrested at school that day and charged with presenting a false ID to a police officer, a misdemeanor. His friends at church bailed him out immediately. Less than twenty-four hours later, he was arrested again, this time for tampering with government documents, a third-degree felony. Again he was bailed out and, this time, given a lawyer. From the beginning, his attorney has claimed that the kid is who he says he is; or at the very least, he says, the burden of proof that he isn't falls upon the prosecutors.

Within days, Principal Garcia agreed to forfeit all sixteen victories from that season and give back Jerry's Newcomer of the Year award. The governing bodies all decided the coach and principal had done their due diligence in checking Jerry's eligibility. It was personal vindication for Garcia, but the principal was hardly at ease. He needed to know one thing: Was there a girl?

···

They were in the same grade. She has fair skin and dark eyes and is a member of the Panther Paws dance group. Though, as her mother says, "she developed early in the chest—we can't go anywhere without men staring," the girl is most certainly still a teenager, a child. On Facebook, she "likes" texting, sleeping, and Despicable Me, and under favorite books says only, "Doesn't matter."

She was really in love with Jerry, says her mother: "Even if it was a puppy love, it was a real love." The mother will talk about what went on between her now 17-year-old daughter and Jerry, but she doesn't want their names published. "The incident," as she calls it, happened one night in August of 2009. The girl was 15. Montimere was 21. The mother was out of town, and the girl was staying with her father for the summer. She says her daughter was likely the aggressor. "We're very close," the mother says. "Best friends. She tells me everything." After a pause, she adds, "Eventually."

She says the girl was honest when the school district, and then the police, asked if they'd had sex. But the mother emphasizes that she and her daughter did not ask for Jerry to be charged with statutory rape. She isn't sure if her daughter would testify, should the case go to trial. When the news first broke, kids at school were vicious. They called the girl a whore. They blamed her for putting the town star in jail. They wore FREE JERRY shirts to school and called at all hours to make horrific threats. Mother and daughter have moved twice in the past year.

Even after all that, she says that Jerry—and she still calls him Jerry—is the best boyfriend her daughter has ever had. "He was sweet, polite, respectful," she says. "A hell of a lot better than most of the trash around here." Jerry even reached out to the girl from jail through friends to say he was sorry for all the trouble. The girl still keeps every article that she finds about him. "That's a teenage girl in love."

As a mother, isn't she concerned about the possible age difference? "Actually, not really that much." She says when her daughter was born, she herself was 15 years old. Her boyfriend, a former Permian football player from the Friday Night Lights era, happened to be 20 at the time.

She says her daughter will be okay. "She's strong," the mother says. "And she has so much light in her. So much light."

Still, the mother has looked into suing the school district. This entire ordeal has been exhausting, and she figures that's worth something. She says her daughter hasn't tried to see Jerry. But she's 17 now, the legal age of consent in Texas. No matter what happens, Jerry will be out of jail someday. "He'll always be welcome in my house," she says.

Odessa is still dumbstruck. Principal Garcia wonders if maybe the kid picked Permian because it's the school from Friday Night Lights. "Maybe he thought we were all a bunch of dumb hillbillies?" Divonte Wallace, the guard who lost his starting spot to Jerry, says the year's a blur. With no college offers, he stuck around Odessa, landing a job at FedEx. He wakes at 3 A.M. and spends the morning slinging boxes. He's staying in shape, though, in case a college ever comes calling.

These days, almost everyone has a theory about Jerry. Some say that he is crazy, possibly traumatized by something so bad it's made him forget his entire life. Some say that he is one of the greatest actors alive—"Maybe he should be in Hollywood," says Divonte. Some even say, despite all the evidence and the incredibly long odds against it, that the person in the adult-male section of the Ector County jail is a very scared 17-year-old boy.

Then there are the dozens of people who witnessed Jerry get baptized. Whoever he was when he went into the water, they say, Jerry Joseph came up. That's what baptism is. They still write him and visit him. They sit behind him at hearings. "I love Jerry," Pastor Philip Skelton says. "To me, he was a kid who sought after God. You don't get too deep into the past. It's not about where you're from. It's about where you're going."

Danny Wright wishes it was that simple. Wright's family, once strong enough to add members without straining, is now torn. His wife and kids still love Jerry. She can't stop thinking of him as her son—the same teenage boy who used to sing as he did the dishes. They visit him and talk to him on the phone.

"Dad, you're not being fair," the kids will say.

"I just don't think it's a good idea," Wright replies. He knows they go see him anyway. Now there are secrets. Now there are things they don't tell Dad.

Coach hears people in town talk. They ask why he's taken in so many kids over the years. They ask if he gets money from the state. He doesn't. "If you know you're right with God," he says, "what people say doesn't matter." Wright would like to think that if some other needy young person came to him asking for help, he'd still give it. "But honestly," he says, "I'm not sure anymore."

This year the Permian basketball team lost eleven of its first twelve games and finished last in the district. The coach and principal both warned the team before the season that they'd get a lot of grief. When they traveled to rival San Angelo, the home crowd wore black T-shirts with GOT JERRY? on the front. On the back of the shirts was OH YEAH...HE'S 22.

"These kids don't deserve that," the coach says. "People forget, they're just kids."

Christmas and New Year's were more subdued this year. Though no one mentioned it, everyone was thinking about Jerry, even little Ariana, now 3. She spent Christmas running around, helping everyone else unwrap their presents. But every so often she'd stop to ask what happened to her brother.

"She's so persistent and so smart," Wright says. "It just cuts you."

They told her he was away at a tournament. But she wanted to know when he was coming home.

"Where's Jerry, Daddy? Where's Jerry?"

···

Between the parking lot and the front door of the Ector County jail is a sign reading BEWARE OF THE SNAKES. The surrounding fence is rimmed with barbed wire. Overhead flaps the Texas flag. And inside is the man so many people know as Jerry Joseph—the same one so many others are convinced is Guerdwich Montimere. He's facing six felony charges, the most serious of which, sexual assault, could land him in prison for twenty years.

His hair has grown out since he was arrested. His eyes aren't as bright as they are in the photos. From behind bulletproof glass, he talks about his new life. He spends much of it alone, he says, reading the Bible—especially the Book of Job. He appreciates stories of God testing men. He plays basketball every so often, but only to stay in shape. A lot of the guys in here just use the game as an excuse to fight. Besides, he says, he doesn't really like the sport that much.

"Basketball is a skill," he says. "It's a gift from God. But it was never my passion." He says it isn't that anyone pressured him to play, exactly. It just made everyone else so happy. Everyone seemed to like him so much more. "I thought about quitting all the time," he says.

He really wants to spill his heart, but his lawyer tells him he shouldn't. He says he's writing a book in his head.

His biggest regret? Not staying home more, he says. He wouldn't have gotten in the trouble he's in now—by which he seems to mean the sexual-assault charges against him—had he just stayed with his family. That's what he imagines these days when he closes his eyes and he needs to get away. He pictures himself with people who love him. He imagines he's at church, with everyone he cares about so much. He's at home "with my mom and my dad and my brothers and sisters." He thinks about them all having dinner together at their house on a quiet avenue in Odessa. "Why do people forget the good things about me?" he says. "They just think I'm some monster."

Of all he's heard and read about himself, the most painful part, he says, is when people imply that he may have gotten baptized to further ingratiate himself. He can't stand someone thinking he exploited the church. And watching him, you can't help but think: He believes. His faith is complete and unwavering. He seems so earnest, so certain that there really is some other guy out there, that this has all been the most incredible series of coincidences. Then again, maybe his fellow church members are right. Maybe Jerry did experience a rebirth of sorts. Every man dreams about it, after all—how life might be different if we had only studied more or gotten the girl or sunk the winning shot. How much fun it'd be to replay the game of life if given a second chance.

"I can't wait for this to be over," he says. But he's not scared. "No matter how it turns out, I know who I am. I know my life."

He says it doesn't matter how he's judged when his court date comes around in August. What matters is the next life.

"I persevere with God in my heart," he says. "He knows me by name."

The name on his court docket is Guerdwich Montimere. And when he gets visitors, the guards call out the name Guerdwich Montimere. And the plastic wristband he wears at all times, that too reads Guerdwich Montimere. So what is his name?

He answers without a second of hesitation or a hint of insincerity.

"My name is Jerry."

Inside the King's Closet | LeBron James

Made-to-Measure three-piece cashmere suit (jacket not shown), $7,995 by Ralph Lauren Purple Label. Made-to-Measure shirt, $600, by Ralph Lauren Purple Label. Cashmere tie, $215, by Ralph Lauren Purple Label. Watch by Audemars Piguet.

Cardigan (his own) by PS Paul Smith. Shirt by Tom Ford. Tie by Ralph Lauren Purple Label. Cords (his own) by A.P.C. Basketball by Nike. Watch (his own) by Audemars Piguet.

Sweater, shirt, and pants by Dolce & Gabbana. Fedora by Borsalino at JJ Hat Center.

Shirt, Dolce & Gabbana. Jeans, Bottega Veneta. Cap, Christys' London. Necklace, Cartier.

Sweater, shirt, and tie by Tom Ford. Jeans (his own) by Rocawear.

Jacket by Nike Sportswear. Henley and jeans by Gucci. Belt (his own) by Yves Saint Laurent. Sunglasses by Tom Ford.

lebron james
Jacket by Gucci. Sweater by Club Monaco. Shirt by Burberry London. Tie by Ascot Chang. Jeans by Bottega Veneta. Watch by Audemars Piguet. Basketball by Nike.

T-shirt by Rick Owens. Jeans by A.P.C

Made-to-measure suit, $2,795, shirt, $325, and tie, $135, by Ralph Lauren Black Label. Pocket square, $55, by Ralph Lauren Black Label. Tie bar, $75, by Tiffany & Co.

My Three Weeks with LeBron James

What was the single craziest scene?
Probably Greenwich, before the decision. It seemed like a train wreck by appointment. You saw it coming flying there, then driving there, then waiting for it to start. Everybody had a sense that this is not good. All 200 people in the room had a healthier sense of foreboding than he and his people did. And with Kanye West there—just add Kanye West and you increase your surreal quotient by a factor of ten. So I'd have to say Greenwich was the strangest moment in a month of strange moments.

For excerpts from "Three Weeks in Crazyville," our September cover story on LeBron James, and behind-the-scenes video and photos, click here.

I heard your hotel in Cleveland kind of summed up the whole feeling of the city.
The hotel was near the arena, and there was this groaning coming through the walls. I've stayed in hotels where groaning could be heard through the walls, but this wasn't that. The night clerk told me it might be the elevators, but the elevators were clear on the other side of the building. And so in my mind it came to stand for the audible mood of Cleveland, which was gloomy. There was really a pall hanging over the city, and this constant groaning in my room kind of captured that for me.

Talk a little bit about LeBron's inner circle—not just family and publicists, but the old teammates and coaches you met in Cleveland.
Well, he was surrounded by a layer of family, then a layer of old friends, and then a layer of Nike people—so Cleveland was where I really got the sense that he is possibly, really insulated from the outside world. All famous people have entourages and inner circles, but this struck me as something larger, even more protective, and harder to break through. I got the sense also that it might've been what kept him from gauging the mood in the real world as people waited for his decision. He really did seem to be at the center of an enormous group of handlers, helpers, and managers—and I'm sure that makes him feel good on a day-to-day basis, but there's a downside to that, too.

You propose in the story that LeBron might have been happiest when he was playing with his best friends, his old high school teammates, and that the Miami move was an attempt to regain that playing-with-friends sort of thing. But is it good that all those people from back in the day are still hanging around?
I think that's hard to know from a distance, but I do think that he draws obvious comfort from being surrounded by people who love him—and I don't see anything wrong with that. But as with anything, all that comfort comes at a cost, and I think that his fear of being alone keeps him at times from walking through the fire that we all have to walk through. Maybe sitting alone in a room and thinking might have helped him realize that an hour-long special devoted to his decision was ill advised. My suspicion from watching him surrounded by people wherever he goes is that he's not spending a lot of time alone in a room thinking through things.

With this tumble down the likeability scale, how does LeBron respond?
There's that old journalism rule that sunshine is the great disinfectant—which is how reporters bust their way into meetings and such all the time. In sports, I really think winning is the great disinfectant. And so I think the danger is that he'll go to Miami, they will be a super team, they'll win, their fans in South Beach will love them, and he won't ever be forced to examine his choices. If he goes to Miami and it's a big disaster, then maybe he'll be forced to take a hard look at his life. But my suspicion is that he'll go there, they'll win, and there won't really be an incentive for him to look back at the last year and do any post-mortem.

Now that we've all had a chance to digest the decision, what's the biggest story going into the season?
I think it's LeBron being booed wherever he goes. This is not just a Cleveland problem. This is a guy who had a Tiger Woods-esque fall from grace, even though he didn't really commit any sins—cardinal or venal or otherwise. His sin was that he made a marketing gaffe. He presented himself in an unflattering light. That's not much of a sin on the scale of public sins. And yet he's become a villain. I don't think we've had anything like this in sports history. We haven't had a beloved sports icon become a villain for something so aesthetic. He's despised, absolutely despised, because of a TV special. He didn't cheat on his wife, he didn't drive drunk, he didn't take drugs, he didn't test positive for PEDs, and almost overnight he went from being a loved guy to being hated. That day-in-day-out condemnation is the story.

Three Weeks in Crazyville | LeBron James

He can imagine, he says, playing for Cleveland again one day.

Did I hear him right? Cleveland?

"If there was an opportunity for me to return," he says, "and those fans welcome me back, that'd be a great story."

Cleveland... Ohio? Where fans at this very moment are burning his jerseys? Where fans are selling toilet paper made from his jerseys?

"Maybe the ones burning my jersey," he says, "were never LeBron fans anyway."

It's six days after The Decision, his accidental mockumentary, his one-man job fair. I'm speaking with him by phone, the third time I've interviewed him in the past nineteen days. Two face-to-face meetings, now this postmortem. Though the world is still booing him, he sounds relaxed, at peace. When I ask what he'd change, what he'd do differently, he says cheerily: "Nothing at all." He reminds me that $2.5 million from The Decision went to the Boys & Girls Clubs, one of his favorite causes: "When I found out I had an opportunity to do that for those kids, it was a no-brainer for me."

I believe him. I know what it sounds like when he's bullshitting me—he's done plenty of that in the past nineteen days—and this sounds real. Still, I press. The backlash, the firestorm, surely he'd change something. What about his shirt, a Ralph Lauren lavender gingham that many didn't care for? Maybe the host, Jim Gray? He laughs. "I might let you host the next one."

We both laugh. Now he's laughing louder, from the gut, and he sounds like a big kid, which is how he struck me the first time we met. Maybe that's why it all unfolded this way. Kids get into all kinds of trouble. Especially during the summer.

Especially this summer, when everyone was in trouble, beginning with a four-star general who fell on his sword on the solstice. This was a summer of rash statements and harsh consequences, of creeping anomie and Ovidian metamorphoses. A formerly despised Cleveland native fell, then somehow ascended to heaven as a saint. George Steinbrenner, that is. The other Clevelander who underwent a complete reversal this summer, who nearly swallowed the summer whole, was LeBron James. Despite all that can be said about summer 2010, despite all that will yet be said, this will be remembered by many as the Summer of LeBron, the summer of his breathtaking swan dive down the likability index, landing him somewhere between Tiger Woods and Tony Hayward.

In modern parlance the most popular way to describe a fuckup—PR gaffe, celebrity addict, war without exit strategy—is "train wreck." But as America waited for James to make his decision, as fans and nonfans debated the metrics and vectors involved, as 13 million tuned in to watch James slooowly decide on Miami, you could actually see the cow wander onto the tracks, hear the brakes screeching, feel the cars decoupling and the caboose go flying.

Why? The mystery that preceded The Decision (Where will he go?) is now replaced by a deeper mystery: Why is everyone so mad? The Decision was seen as self-regard run amok, a tone-deaf celebration of Me Me Me. But if self-regard were a crime, every other actor and athlete would be in jail. Why did James, so compelling, so coveted in the days leading up to his decision, become so radioactive after? His handlers were said to be trying to build his brand. He's branded all right. He's Hester Prynne in a headband.

Again, how come? One ESPN exec sees it as mass displacement and projection. Everyone reacted badly because they saw Cleveland as a cross between Sandra Bullock, Elin Nordegren, and Elizabeth Edwards. "People really loved this guy. But he basically drove to Greenwich, Connecticut, and broke up with his girlfriend on live TV, and that didn't sit well."

In fact, he broke up with many girlfriends. Millions. Fans saw James—handsome, talented, rich—as the ultimate prize. A real catch. They wanted to get with him. They called him, friended him, texted him, showed up on his doorstep. When he chose that bitch from South Beach, they lost it, as jilted contestants on reality shows usually do. Pulling away in the limo, hair askew, mascara running, America wailed and said a bunch of stuff that had to be bleeped.

That's the kind of summer it was.

···

I'm in Manhattan, deep inside a warehouse on the Hudson, walking toward a thumping bass that makes my clavicle vibrate. I open a large metal door and enter a kind of airplane hangar where thirty people are dancing around one man as if he's a Maypole. They're posing him, dressing him, covering him with special powders and spritzing him with love. They're the pros, the people who specialize in making celebrities feel celebrated, and today, June 25, they're going all out, because this is the man of the hour, the talk of the nation, the most coveted free agent in the history of the NBA.

Clearly James enjoys this moment, this attention. Watching him, I think of a line from Margaret Fuller, the nineteenth-century intellectual: For precocity some great price is always demanded sooner or later in life. James is the glaring exception to this rule. The self-crowned King is cashing in on his precocity, big-time, and he hasn't yet paid a single karmic piper. Suddenly his publicist whirls into my line of vision. A trim, well-dressed man in his early fifties who keeps his hair and his answers short, he says the shoot is running long. The interview will be delayed.

I buy a cup of coffee and wait with James's book, Shooting Stars, a memoir of his fierce bond with four friends—his fellow starters on his high school basketball team back in Akron, his hometown. Before their freshman year, James and his friends decided not to attend Buchtel, where every African-American student in the neighborhood went. Instead they enrolled at St. Vincent—St. Mary, a predominantly white Catholic school. They liked the basketball coach at St. Vincent better.

For this brazen defection the boys endured vicious taunts and abuse. People called them traitors, said they were betraying their own kind. James and his friends didn't care. They wanted to win, they wanted to be together. The chapter of James's book that chronicles this difficult, unpopular decision is called "The Decision."

Written with Buzz Bissinger, Shooting Stars skirts the most painful parts of James's early years. As the only child of a single mother—Gloria, who gave birth at 16—James grew up poor, alone, never knowing his father. At first he and his mother lived with his grandmother in a big, roomy house, but when James was almost 3, his grandmother died. Heart attack. Christmas Day. (When I ask him later to pick the angriest he's ever been, he picks that day.)

With little education and scant work, Gloria couldn't hang on to the house. She and James hit the streets, moving constantly, and when James was in the fourth grade he essentially stopped attending school. He also spent many nights by himself, praying for his mother to come home. Sometimes she disappeared for days. "I became afraid that one day I would wake up and she would be gone forever," James writes. "It's all I really cared about when I was growing up, waking up and knowing that my mom was still alive and still by my side."

One day Gloria came home and delivered hard news. Until she could right herself, she was sending James to live with the family of his peewee football coach. The change was traumatic but stabilizing. With a permanent home, James reconnected in school and excelled at sports. It can't be coincidence that this was the moment he discovered basketball, finding his way into a traveling league.

In time James's mother reclaimed him. They moved into the projects and managed to stay put until James graduated from high school. Today James lives minutes from those projects, in an eleven-bedroom, 35,000-square-foot house with its own bowling alley. His mother lives nearby in a house he bought her. "He's utterly, totally devoted to her," Bissinger says.

I'm summoned back to the airplane hangar. James is almost ready. The publicist asks if it would be okay to do the interview here. He points to a couch at the epicenter of all the action. Here? With all these people running around? No, I say, apologetic, that won't work. We need privacy, a room with two chairs, maybe even a door. The publicist looks pained, as if I'm asking for a weeklong hiking trip with James in the woods of Maine.

We go around the warehouse, inspecting rooms. We look at one room that's like a crypt, only more confining. We look at another that's airier but reeks of paint fumes. I vote for the paint-fume room. The publicist says no, but not because of the fumes. It's too private, he says. Before I can process this odd remark, he suggests a patio outside the warehouse. There are two sofas, or divans—they might even be beds. Fine, I say.

James appears. He wears shorts, a sleeveless formfitting shirt, and extra-large black sunglasses. In his right hand he holds a jeroboam of Vitaminwater, the largest bottle of Vitaminwater I've ever seen, which makes sense, since he's six feet eight, north of 260 pounds. But numbers alone can't convey his synthesis of dense mass and lithe movement, of pinpoint balance and dormant power. They can't convey the size of his delts, each one like an overinflated football. He eases himself down onto one of the sofa/divan/beds. I take the other. So, I say, are you feeling stressed-out about your pending decision?

Oh no, he says. "It's a very exciting time for me." It feels great to be in full control of his future, he says. And being in control, he adds, means keeping heart and head separate. "My emotions won't be involved and will not affect what my decision will ultimately be."

His circle of friends includes some heavyweights. Warren Buffett, Michael Jordan, Jay-Z. What do they say about his decision? What recommendations have they made?

None.

I look at him, dubious.

"I respect them for that," he says. "You know, my family and friends have never been yes-men: 'Yes, you're doing the right thing, you're always right.' No, they tell me when I'm wrong, and that's why I've been able to stay who I am and stay humble."

Lately he's come in for some humbling flak. Fans have questioned his will to win. His Cavs were favored to make the Finals this year; instead they bowed to the Celtics, with James just not looking like himself. He had a bad elbow, of course, which caused flashes of numbness and pain. But some fans diagnosed a more sinister disorder. They thought James looked distracted, as if he'd already left Cleveland in his mind.

James didn't make it easy on himself at the time by snapping to reporters, "I spoil a lot of people with my play." I ask him about the remark. He doesn't back off it. "I love our fans. Cleveland fans are awesome. But I mean, even my family gets spoiled at times watching me doing things that I do, on and off the court."

Spoiled people—he doesn't understand them. He was raised to suck it up, do without, be quiet about disappointment. "That's what keeps me humble, because I know my background, know what my mother went through. I never get too high on my stardom or what I can do. My mom always says, and my friends say, 'You're just a very low-maintenance guy.' "

Low maintenance? A quality not associated with too many NBA stars. I mention Kobe Bryant, who flies to home games in a private helicopter. No one can accuse Kobe of being low-maintenance, and yet—

James interrupts me by pulling down his enormous sunglasses and giving me a look that says: No one is less low-maintenance than Kobe. He slides his glasses back up his nose and doesn't elaborate.

The greatest players use anger as fuel. Michael Jordan played every night with something like road rage. Bryant resented Shaquille O'Neal, then resented the world for persecuting him about Colorado. The greats have chips on their shoulders, whereas James seems to have nothing on his but those football-sized delts. Maybe he doesn't have enough anger? Maybe he's too good at repressing his anger?

"Are you a sports psychologist?" he asks.

No. But he's conceded in the past that he might not have the killer instinct of Kobe. That still true?

"I hope not," he says. "I don't think so. I think I've gotten to a point now in my career where I do feel like I have a killer instinct."

Just a theory, I say. In his line of work, it seems like anger equals success.

"That's an awesome theory," he says.

Some truth to it?

"Maybe."

All right, I say, suddenly feeling very much like a psychologist. Maybe we'll revisit this topic during our next session, in Akron....

I ask about his mother. He smiles. "She doesn't hold her tongue. If she sees something that she believes isn't right or is right, she's going to speak about it."

There's no telling Gloria what to do, he adds. James has been begging her not to get a tattoo, and just the other day she got one.

What does it say?

"Queen James."

Whoa. I want to ask how his girlfriend, Savannah, feels about that. If Mom is queen, what does that make the mother of James's two sons, LeBron junior, 5, and Bryce, 3? I also want to ask how Savannah feels about his pending decision, and dozens more questions, but here comes the publicist. Time.

···

Logically, it doesn't add up, this hysteria. We're supposed to judge athletes the way we age trees, by counting their rings. James has none, and yet we still call him King. Kobe has five rings, half the Spurs have three, but every fan and GM is ready to donate a kidney if the ringless James will wear their jersey next year.

Maybe it's all about potential. Nothing thrills us—gold rushes, IPOs, door number 3—like potential, and James has been a big bundle of latency since he was 12. As the best high school player anyone ever saw, he was the first pick of the 2003 draft, and quickly legitimized all the hullabaloo by leading the hapless Cavs back to the playoffs, then to their first-ever Finals. The league's MVP last season and the one before, he's more than valuable, he's a basketball polymath: a shooter who defends, a scorer who passes, a big who moves. He can dance around the arc like a pre-propofol Michael Jackson, or rumble down the lane like a lumberjack in a monster truck. His game has flaws, of course, but they only make his potential more exciting. Imperfect as he is, he posts triple doubles with ease. Once he matures—he's only 25—who knows? Double triples?

In 2006, Cleveland did the obvious, offering James a max deal, five years, $80 million. James, preferring to keep his options open, asked for a shorter deal, and thus tipped over the LeBron Free Agency Hourglass, which has been losing sand, and causing hysteria, ever since. Only a few grains are left as I arrive in Cleveland at the start of July.

James's decision hovers in the humid air. Poland must have felt this way in the summer of 1939. Except it's not an invasion Cleveland fears, but a departure.

My second interview with James is at the University of Akron basketball arena. The publicist meets me in the lobby and says the interview will take place in the gym while James watches his NBA friends scrimmage with some high schoolers. Other than the median on I-40, I can't think of a more ridiculous place for an interview.

Okay, the publicist says wearily, I get it.

We begin looking at rooms. I wonder if the publicist feels the irony: While James can't decide on a team, we can't decide on a room. Then, eureka, we walk into a quiet room where the A/C is on full blast and the windows look onto the lovely campus. Perfect.

No, the publicist says. This won't work. LeBron's never been in this room before.

What difference—

He doesn't like rooms he's never been in before.

You can't be—

He doesn't like to be in a strange room with a stranger.

But I'm not a—

It's not you, that's just how he is. And another thing: This room is too big. I've known him for five years; he will not be comfortable in this room.

I remember a story about Napoleon: He agreed to a portrait, then wouldn't sit still for the painter.

The publicist takes me to the locker room, which smells of old jockstraps. Actually, it smells like one giant jockstrap the size of a hammock. But James has been here before, so he'll be comfortable. And there's a TV, so he can watch the World Cup while we talk.

The publicist lowers his voice confidentially: Ask about Chicago.

Chicago? Really?

And New York.

Wait, what?

And Miami.

He's going to play for three teams next year?

LeBron has said that his decision will be a basketball decision.

So?

Ask him about that. But don't tell him I told you.

Told me what? Did I miss something?

It's futile to ask the publicist straight out for the inside dope on James's decision. So I play coy, tell him I have a feeling James is going to the Knicks. His eyes widen.

The Knicks, then?

No.

Miami?

He shakes his head. The whole Dwyane Wade—Chris Bosh thing, he says—it's not going to happen.

I'm getting dizzy.

In walks James, looking beat. He's an inveterate napper, takes one before every game, and he looks as if he's skipped a few siestas lately. He flops onto a black leather couch, checks his BlackBerry. I tell him I appreciate him making time. I know he'd rather be out in the gym with his friends. I wait for him to say, "Don't worry about it." He doesn't.

In the past week he's been courted by delegations from six teams: Miami, New York, New Jersey, Chicago, Los Angeles, Cleveland. Someone close to James says every team talked about winning—except Cleveland, which talked about home, even employing photos of James's family. I ask about the process.

"Tiring," he says. "A lot of information. You know, you go from one team that tells you this, and you go to another team that tells you that, so it's a lot of information that's built up into your hard drive."

And still, he insists, the hard drive hasn't spit out an answer. He also repeats that he's making this decision alone, without recommendations from anyone. I don't believe him.

I ask about his physical health. He played basketball yesterday for the first time in seven weeks and looked good. But he iced down his elbow afterward. Should people read anything into that?

"No, it's more about proactive than reactive. I go out there and get a hard workout, and I know the elbow is not 100 percent healthy. It feels great, but I'm not going to wait until it hurts to start icing it." (Mike Mancias, his trainer, won't discuss the elbow's status: "We're kind of keeping that under wraps.")

More than his elbow, people continue to question his will. Again, the playoffs. Why did he stand around? "I've never been standing around," he says. "That's not me. Even if I tried, I couldn't do it. The fact that me and you are sitting here right now by ourselves is an uncomfortable feeling."

Standing around in the playoffs, sitting with me in a locker room—I don't get the connection. And yet I still feel compelled to apologize. "No, it's okay," he says, and now he's the one sounding apologetic. He murmurs, "I like being around people."

I know, I say, taken aback by his downcast face. The fatherless boy who sat alone nights, listening to sirens and gunfire, wondering if his mother would come home, grows up to be a man who doesn't like to be alone. Worse, he can't bear to be alone in a room with some random stranger firing questions. Questions like the one I'm building up to: Do you ever think about your father?

Before I can ask it, his sons burst in. They leap onto the couch with James, who brightens and says if they want to stay through this interview, they need to be quiet. The 5-year-old doesn't like the sound of that one bit. Nor does his 3-year-old brother. "Stay and be quiet," James says, "or go outside and be loud. Which is it?"

"Loud," LeBron junior says.

"All right. Go."

Quick as they appeared, they scamper away.

Does being a father make him think about his old man?

"No," he says dully. He stares at the soccer game. When the subject is delicate, difficult, his voice becomes vacant. A flat effect, Bissinger calls it. "I'm not downgrading my father or blasting him," he says, "because I don't know what he may have been going through at the time. I'm not one of those to judge without knowing. I was too young to understand."

He feels no anger, he adds. "Without him, first of all, I wouldn't be here in this world. And then, secondly, I may have got a lot of genes from him, and that's part of the reason why I am who I am today.... I mean, it's not all anger. It's not all anger at all."

Would he like to meet his father?

"No."

Really?

"Right now? At 25? No."

Maybe later?

"Maybe. Yeah."

In some ways the one true patriarch of James's boyhood was Jordan. James grew up worshipping Jordan. Not admiring, not emulating—worshipping. Photos of Jordan covered one entire wall of his cell-like bedroom. But, loyalty-wise, how did it work? How could a kid from around here worship Jordan, who stuck a knife in Cleveland's carotid every year?

James explains that he's not from Cleveland, he's from Akron, thirty minutes south. "It's not far, but it is far. And Clevelanders, because they were the bigger-city kids when we were growing up, looked down on us.... So we didn't actually like Cleveland. We hated Cleveland growing up. There's a lot of people in Cleveland we still hate to this day."

···

I go into the gym and sit on a folding chair with some NBA scouts. James's sons appear, carrying a basketball between them. They begin playing one-on-one in the half-court nearest me. The game is lopsided. And dangerous. LeBron junior repeatedly fouls his little brother, Bryce. Hard fouls. Flagrant fouls. When he wants the ball, he throws Bryce onto the floor, rips it away, then looks around to see if there are any witnesses.

In matching outfits of camouflage shorts and white tank tops, the boys might be the most exquisitely beautiful children I've ever seen. Each glows, shines with health, and each is an obvious, incipient basketball prodigy. The rim stands several stories above their heads, but their aim is true.

Bryce catches my eye and freezes. He sprints toward me. In a flash he's against my leg, laughing up into my face. He takes my forearm in his soft little hand.

What's your name?

Bryce.

That your brother over there?

Yes.

Which of you is the better basketball player?

He aims a thumb the size of a baby carrot at himself.

I start to ask another question, but he fast-breaks away. Like father...

I step outside the gym and talk with Romeo Travis, who played forward on James's national-championship-winning high school team. Travis and the team's other three standouts remain James's closest friends. Most had father issues as boys—distant father, absent father, bullying father—but Travis learned from James to play through the pain. "I was angry all the time," he says, "and [LeBron] definitely showed me there's no point in just being angry. Anger is only hurting you."

James staved off his anger, Travis says, by using coaches and teammates as surrogates. "It was like a mesh that really kind of helped him—not really resolve not having a father, but kind of eased the pain a little."

Whatever pain is left over, Travis says, they don't talk about it. The bond among the high school crew has always been largely nonverbal. "Everything doesn't need to be discussed. We know we have problems.... We just want to share. 'Hey, man, you want to come over and watch a game? Let's go see a movie.' You know, just anything, just so you're not alone and you don't have to sit there with that."

Back in the gym, I bump into the publicist. He leans toward me. James is going to announce his decision the day after tomorrow, he says. July 8.

I'd like to be there when it happens, I say.

He looks around to make sure no one is listening. Fly to New York, he whispers, and await further instructions.

Fly to New York and—what?

He says again: Await further instructions.

New York? So it is the Knicks?

The publicist somehow manages to shake his head no and nod yes at the same time.

Is something happening in New York?

He shakes his head.

Then why am I going there? And what am I supposed to do once I get there? Exchange briefcases with a Russian operative?

Call me when you land, the publicist whispers, and I'll tell you where to go next.

Next? You mean, another city?

He nods.

Chicago? Miami?

I can't say, he whispers. And don't tell anyone what I've just told you.

Not a problem.

The next morning, I turn on the TV and learn that James will announce his decision in a live one-hour special on ESPN. I e-mail the publicist to ask if I should fly to Connecticut, where ESPN is based. He instantly shoots back an e-mail: No! LaGuardia.

I stare at the e-mail. Why would he specify which airport? Is that significant? Why not JFK? Or Newark? Is there some hidden clue in his two-word message? A LeBronci Code? No! LaGuardia. I rearrange the letters. Lunar Adagio! Again, Our Lad! I decide to just do as I'm told.

Radio Laguna?

···

I land in New York. An e-mail is waiting from the publicist. James will make his announcement at the Boys & Girls Club in Greenwich at 9 P.M. I hire a car and leave in the early afternoon, by which time everyone is reporting that James will sign with Miami.

Which makes sense. In fact, perfect sense. James has told me repeatedly that he won't base his decision on emotions, but it appears he's based it on the deepest emotions of all, the emotions of adolescence, of being among trusted friends on a "superteam" that couldn't lose. High school might have been the only time in James's life that he felt wholly safe, and his hunger to rekindle that time has clearly trumped other considerations.

James has done everything possible to carry his high school experience forward. His St. Vincent's teammates travel with him, party with him, and always have his back. At some point, however, he must have realized that wasn't enough. His high school teammates couldn't take the floor with him every night, couldn't help him win a championship as they once did. He needed to clone them, create surrogates on the NBA level. It wasn't possible with anyone on Cleveland's roster, apparently, or any other team's. Only Wade and Bosh—who came into the league with James, bonded with him at All-Star Games, won gold with him in Beijing—provided that special combination of chemistry and talent.

Though I take James at his word that he wants to win championships, what he also wants is friends. Family. He can't be alone.

He certainly won't be alone at the Boys & Girls Club. Inside are scores of VIPs, ESPN employees, and kids, most of whom are wolfing down pizzas in a rec room. A few shy ones are hiding in a small gym, shooting baskets. I ask if they want to play H-O-R-S-E. They stare. They've never heard of the game.

The sharpshooter in the group is Gabby Laccona, 11, a girl with big brown eyes and thick brown hair wrestled into a ponytail. She has an unerring midrange jumper, of which she tries to pretend she's not proud. She says softly that, yes, she's the best player on her youth-league team and, no, the boys don't tease her. "Girls," she says, "are much meaner."

During the summer months, Gabby spends all day, every day, at the Boys & Girls Club near her house in Stamford. The club saved her life, she says, because until she found it, she was forced to spend every day with Grandma. She loves Grandma, "but all we'd do is watch TV." Now she can play sports, which are her reason for existence. "If there was no sports," she says, "I would be, like, nowhere."

Blake Guerrieri, 10, agrees. "If sports weren't invented," he says, "I'd spend all my time daydreaming about if there were sports."

I ask them and half a dozen of their friends if they like James. No. They love him. They have his jersey, shoes, etc., and they're not worried about needing to buy new ones. Gabby predicts with supreme confidence that James will stay with the Cavs. It's the only decision that makes sense to her.

Gradually the building fills with more kids and reps from James's many sponsors, including Vitaminwater. A man sets up enormous drums of iced Vitaminwater and urges the kids to help themselves. Once the kids have had their fill, an official from the Boys & Girls Club herds them into the main gym and arranges them on some bleachers as background for the night's drama. In the foreground are two director's chairs.

Minutes before nine, James arrives. With him are his advisers; his girlfriend, Savannah; and Kanye West. Kanye West? While James is dressed casually—gingham shirt, dark jeans, beige basketball shoes—West is a hip-hop Hef. Black blazer, black pants, multihued bedroom slippers. His black sunglasses are so dark he can't possibly see the person to whom he's talking. He aims a Ray Charles smile at a spot just beside them.

The entourage stands just outside the gym, waiting to be called. James begins jumping in place, shaking his limbs, like a prizefighter before being led into the ring. He sees me and points. I point back. He jokes with Savannah, then playfully chases her around the room. When someone from ESPN says it's time, he grabs Savannah, gives her a hug and kiss, and tells her: "Wish me luck." She does. Then he shows her his teeth and asks her to make sure he doesn't have food caught between his incisors. She gives him the all clear and pushes him into the gym.

He takes one of the director's chairs, and Jim Gray, whom he's known for years, climbs into the other. A makeup artist blots the sweat from each man's forehead. It's boiling hot in the gym. Someone should blot the kids.

The show starts. Without needing to be told, everyone falls silent. James and his decision are being discussed by analysts in the ESPN main studio, but neither audio nor video are piped into the gym, so for one minute, three minutes, ten, it's cathedral quiet. Finally the stage manager cues Gray, who asks James a series of icebreaker questions, which no one in the gym can hear.

Then Gray throws it back to the studio.

The break stretches on and on. Twenty-two minutes after the hour, we're back, and Gray comes to the Question. What's your decision? James frowns, waits. "In this fall," he says, "I'm going to take my talents to South Beach and join the Miami Heat."

The kids groan. Gabby's mouth falls open. Huh? Blake looks confused. Miami? Did he say Miami? The mob outside starts booing.

James seems to be speaking from the heart, off the cuff, and that's not a good thing. He should have rehearsed. There were so many other, better ways to put his announcement. The same goes for what he says next, and next, about the fans and his future—and especially about Cleveland. ("It's hard to explain. My heart in the seven years that I gave to that franchise, to that city, was everything.") The people close to him should have run lines with him. Maybe there wasn't time. But if half the energy put into protecting James, into keeping his decision a secret, had been put into prepping him, the whole thing might have played better.

I sneak out of the gym and find the publicist in the office of the executive director of the Boys & Girls Club. He's eating chocolates, looking as if he's just passed a kidney stone. I ask why they chose to stage The Decision in Greenwich.

Neutral location, he says.

Neutral? In the heart of Knicks country? Half the people in that gym wanted him to play for the Knicks.

He shrugs.

I have many more questions, but a man comes rushing into the office, somewhat breathless, and says something needs to be done. Right now.

What's the matter?

The kids, he says. They've been trapped in that hot gym for an hour, unable to move, and they're full of Vitaminwater.

They need to pee. Bad.

···

Freud said we're all narcissists at heart. We're hardwired at birth for narcissism, but we fight it, repress it. That's why we're fascinated by outward displays of it. Children, criminals, humorists, and cats, he said, possess a shameless self-regard that compels our attention, "as if we envied them for maintaining a blissful state of mind."

Had he witnessed the aftermath of The Decision, Freud would have eaten his cigar. Americans fascinated by narcissism? They have a funny way of showing it. Within seconds of The Decision comes a landslide of derision. Sportswriters, bloggers, tweeters, pundits, comedians, cabdrivers—half the world accuses James of showing insufferable self-importance, though at least half his critics sound equally self-important.

Dan Gilbert, owner of the Cavs, issues a screed written in blood, which reads like a page from the shooting script of Fatal Attraction. John Mayer weighs in from wherever he's been hiding since making racially and sexually offensive remarks and extolling the wonders of his penis in an interview last February. (When John Mayer is on you for being a narcissist, you've got problems.) If he's not being called a narcissist, James is being mocked for having too little ego, for abdicating his monarchy to become a Miami oligarch. Jordan says it. Reggie Miller says it. Charles Barkley says it. "If I was 25," Barkley says, "I would want to make sure I was the Guy.... LeBron is never going to be the Guy."

James says the criticism from former players was expected. "Charles was probably trying to be funny," he says. Then he adds darkly: "It wasn't funny to me."

I call Maverick Carter, James's longtime friend and manager, days after The Decision. He sounds baffled and woozy, like a science buff who was mixing chemicals in the garage and accidentally blew up the neighborhood. "How did it get so big?" he asks plaintively. "I've been thinking in my mind of the Malcolm Gladwell book—what was the tipping point?"

Carter says the whole thing started with Gray, who wasn't paid a penny, all of which Gray confirms. The idea, Gray says, first occurred to him when he saw Carter and Ari Emanuel, head of William Morris Endeavor Entertainment, courtside at Game 2 of the NBA Finals. "I asked, 'Could I do the first interview with LeBron once he's signed with his new team? Better yet,' I said, 'we go buy an hour of network TV time and have your announcement of where LeBron's going to play on live TV.' As soon as I got that out of my mouth, Ari said, 'Brilliant idea.' And Maverick said, 'We won't take any of the money. We'll make a big contribution to charity.' Then it took on a life of its own."

Carter and Emanuel went to ABC, Gray says, "and it went from there to ESPN." (ABC and ESPN are both owned by Disney.)

James doesn't really care how it happened, or what's happened since. He made the right decision, he says. He knows it, and the people around him know it. "They're happy to see me happy," he says. "That's what they can see in my face. They say: 'It's been a while since we've seen you look like that.' "

In fact, anyone can see it. It's right there, on the video, as he's being presented to Miami, amid strobe lights and pink smoke. He and Wade and Bosh come onstage, smiling, strutting, and no one notices that James is doing a very specific strut, a crouched-over duckwalk he used to do years ago—when he took the court with his high school teammates.

Even James isn't aware. When I point it out, he sounds stunned.

Bissinger studied those first images from Miami, and he watched the first news conference. "When I saw the look on his face sitting there with Wade and Bosh, for all the anger everyone has, it was clear LeBron had died and gone to heaven," he says. "Pop psychology is always dangerous, but he really is replicating his high school experience."

The one sad thing in this otherwise euphoric moment, James says, is the ugly stuff being said about his game. "People questioning how much I love the game. That's never been something I haven't cherished. Every night on the court I give my all, and if I'm not giving 100 percent, I criticize myself."

Though he can imagine one day returning to play for the Cavs, he's thinking more about facing them next year. He wants to play well—really well. "I do have motivation," he says ominously. "A lot of motivation."

It's not the fans he wants to show, but that man in the owner's box. "I don't think he ever cared about LeBron. My mother always told me: 'You will see the light of people when they hit adversity. You'll get a good sense of their character.' Me and my family have seen the character of that man."

The decision to leave Cleveland was painful, he says again. "It touched my heart. I understood that a lot of people would be hurt." Then he read Gilbert's letter and it worked like Novocain. "It made me feel more comfortable that I made the right decision."

Given the bad blood, the bitterness, can he possibly continue to live in Ohio?

"I'm in Akron as we speak!" he says cheerfully. "I'm going to spend a lot of the summer here. This is my home. Akron, Ohio, is my home. I will always be here. I'm still working out at my old high school."

He worked out this morning, in fact.

And how did they receive him at his beloved alma mater?

"Awesome," he says. "They love me. They're going to support me no matter what."

J. R. MOEHRINGER, author of the memoir The Tender Bar, profiled Kobe Bryant in the March 2010 issue.