LeBron

New York Times Bestseller

LeBron

Jeff Benedict

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To Gary

I grew up thinking you walked out on Mom and me. As a kid, I was convinced you didn’t care. About her. About me. As an adult, I wondered why. I knew where to find you. But I never bothered. Then, in my late forties, I got your number and called. When you answered, you called me Son. Turned out, you had read and saved most everything I’d ever written. Turned out, you were longing, too. You traveled to my home. Met my family. Put your arms around me. Told me you loved me. Told me you were proud. All those years… I had it wrong. I learned that when a baby is born to two unwed adolescents, a lot gets buried. I love you. Thank you for being my father. This one’s for you.

ONE

WHAT JUST HAPPENED?

A motorcade of shiny black SUVs exited Westchester County Airport and crossed into Connecticut, meandering along wooded back roads before turning onto a smoothly paved private drive lined on both sides with stone walls and large leafy oaks and maples. In the backseat of one of the vehicles, twenty-five-year-old LeBron James sat beside twenty-three-year-old Savannah Brinson, his soulmate since high school and the mother of their two little boys. In his eyes, she was the one thing more enchanting than the idyllic scenery visible through the windows as they eased to a stop in front of a house on an estate in Greenwich. Wearing black shades, a white T-shirt, and black cargo shorts, James stepped out and looked around. Golden light from the late-afternoon sun shone through the property’s white picket fence, illuminating the lush green lawn, pink and purple impatiens, and chocolate-colored mulch. A stone path led to the sprawling New England Colonial. It was Thursday, July 8, 2010, and James had come to rehearse, have dinner, and relax. In a few hours, he was set to appear in a prime-time special on ESPN to reveal his decision whether to remain with the Cleveland Cavaliers or join one of the five teams that had been courting him for more than a year. The world’s most celebrated basketball player couldn’t foresee that by the end of the night he would be the most hated athlete in all of sports.

More than a half dozen people poured out of the other vehicles, including two of his best friends, twenty-nine-year-old Maverick Carter and twenty-eight-year-old Rich Paul. They were among the handful of people who knew James’s plans. Carter and Paul, along with James’s thirty-one-year-old chief of staff, Randy Mims, had been with James since his senior year of high school in Akron, Ohio, when LeBron had asked the three of them to come work for him, to be his inner circle. Smart, ambitious, and fiercely loyal to each other, they and James called themselves the Four Horsemen. Mims hadn’t joined them on this trip, but Carter and Paul followed James down the stone path toward the house, walking with a swagger. Especially Carter. James’s business partner and an aspiring mogul, he was the one who had advised James to announce his decision in such an audacious way. James was the only athlete in America with the muscle to get ESPN’s president, John Skipper, to green-light an hour for his own show. And Carter relished the idea of James using that muscle to do something more revolutionary than merely exercising his right as a free agent to choose one team over another. Rather, James was about to issue what amounted to a declaration of independence from the economic grip of team owners, from the filters that journalists at traditional media platforms put on him, and from the overall power dynamic that historically kept athletes—especially Black athletes—in their place.

Savvy and entrepreneurial, Paul was gearing up to become a sports agent, and he was uneasy over the way the decision was being announced. But he agreed with Maverick on one thing: LeBron was about to wreck the status quo.

Brimming with confidence, James took in the moment with his friends. He recognized how much leverage he possessed. In seven seasons in Cleveland, he had done things that no basketball player—not even Michael Jordan—had done. Ordained the Chosen One on the cover of Sports Illustrated during his junior year of high school and signed to a $90 million shoe contract by Nike before graduating, James had entered the NBA like a comet at age eighteen and promptly become the youngest and fastest player in league history to reach the collective milestones of 10,000 points, 2,500 rebounds, 2,500 assists, 700 steals, and 300 blocks. He was on pace to become the most prolific scorer-playmaker the game had ever seen. In 2004, at nineteen, he became the youngest NBA player to make the US Olympic basketball roster, and in 2008, at twenty-three, he won a gold medal. In the same year, he produced his first film through his newly formed production company, signed his first book contract, and went into business with Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine at Beats Electronics, which was later acquired by Apple. He also cultivated friendships with two of the richest men in the world, Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, both of whom were impressed with the cadre of sophisticated bankers and lawyers who were advising James and his inner circle. Of James, Buffett said, If he were an IPO, I’d buy in.

By July 2010, James’s estimated $50 million in annual earnings from his basketball salary and endorsement deals were just part of his burgeoning portfolio. His worth was on track to crest $1 billion within the coming decade. There had never been a billionaire playing professional team sports in America. James was determined to be the first.

At Nike, he had eclipsed Tiger Woods as the shoe company’s most valuable brand ambassador. When Woods had crashed his SUV into a neighbor’s tree and seen his reputation crumble in a sensational adultery scandal the previous fall, corporations dropped the golfer and increasingly gravitated toward James. American Express, McDonald’s, Coca-Cola, and Walmart embraced the authenticity of James’s devotion to family and his unrelenting commitment to his Akron roots.

Meantime, his global fame already transcended sports. Performing with Jay-Z, campaigning for Barack Obama, dining with Anna Wintour, doing a photo shoot with Annie Leibovitz and Gisele, and starting his own foundation, James ventured into politics, fashion, mass media, and philanthropy before his twenty-fifth birthday. In a recent one-year span, he was profiled on 60 Minutes and appeared on the covers of Vogue, Time, Esquire, Fortune, and GQ. According to a leading celebrity index, James had surpassed Jay-Z in popularity. And Nike made James into a global icon through Hollywood-caliber television commercials that showcased his abilities as an actor and comedian. From China to cities across Europe, James became a household name.

About the only thing James hadn’t done was win an NBA championship. But that, he had determined, was about to change. For more than a year he’d been clear that when his contract with the Cavaliers expired after the 2009–2010 season, he would look at his options and sign with the organization that was best equipped to field a team capable of winning rings. Everyone wanted in. Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the city of New York went as far as launching the C’mon LeBron campaign, putting up digital messages in Times Square and running ads on the mini-screens of taxicabs in hopes that James would join the Knicks. A Russian billionaire who owned the Brooklyn Nets tried to lure him by sharing his vision to help James become a billionaire. Even President Obama weighed in, making a pitch from the West Wing for his hometown Chicago Bulls. Billboards in Cleveland begged James to stay. Billboards in Miami pleaded with him to come.

Like any great entertainer, James wanted to be wanted. By everyone. At times he obsessed over the way people perceived him, especially when it came to his peers. The day before James traveled to Greenwich, free agent Kevin Durant used fewer than 140 characters on Twitter to announce his decision to sign a contract extenions with the Oklahoma City Thunder, saying, I’m just not the guy that always wants to be in the limelight or have my business out there. Durant was James’s closest rival in terms of talent. And Durant’s low-key manner drew widespread praise from basketball writers, many of whom used his approach to take shots at James and his ESPN special. An hour show? WTF? a Fox Sports commentator wrote. Some players anonymously piled on. With LeBron, it’s all about him, one unnamed NBA player told a sportswriter. He talks about wanting to be one of the greatest of all time, like Jordan, like Kobe. But Jordan and Kobe would never do this. He’s trying to be bigger than the game.

James read what was written about him. The constant comparisons to Jordan and Kobe got old. But nothing stung more than being called selfish. In his mind, he was just approaching basketball the same way team owners did—as a business. Teams were willing to compete for his services. Why not meet with them and listen to their pitches? And why not try to orchestrate the best situation possible by talking to other players about joining forces to win championships together? That wasn’t selfish. It was shrewd.

No one seemed to appreciate James’s approach as much as Miami Heat team president Pat Riley. During the previous week leading up to the ESPN special, James met with more than a dozen executives from teams jockeying to entice him. Riley showed up with his championship rings, making it clear that he knew what it took to win them. He also wasn’t threatened by James’s taking it upon himself to recruit other great players to band with him for a championship run.

From a career standpoint, it was clear to James that Miami was the smart play. Still, the prospect of leaving Cleveland tore at him. Ohio was home. He had never lived anywhere else. He was comfortable there. And for reasons that few people other than his mother fully understood, James had a visceral connection to his hometown of Akron that made him feel indebted to the place that had made him. His head was telling him to go to Miami. His heart was tethered to Akron.

Determined not to disappoint his mother, he called her hours before flying to Greenwich and told her what he was thinking. He was the one, she told him, who had to live with the consequences of his decision. She encouraged him to do what was best for him.

Anxious to get the whole thing behind him, James felt a welcome sense of relief when he entered the Greenwich home of Mark Dowley. Wearing faded jeans and an untucked polo, Dowley didn’t look the part of a senior partner at William Morris Endeavor (WME), the most influential talent agency in Hollywood. A marketing strategist, Dowley had arranged the details of the ESPN special. James didn’t know Dowley particularly well. But Carter did, which was what mattered to James. He thanked Dowley for welcoming him and opening up his home.

Although Dowley’s agency was based in Los Angeles, he resided in Greenwich, which factored heavily into his desire to stage the event there. It was to take place at the Greenwich Boys & Girls Club, and the proceeds from the ESPN show would be donated to Boys & Girls Clubs in the cities of the NBA teams that had been courting James.

Dowley introduced James to his awestruck twelve-year-old son and a few of his buddies. Some representatives from ESPN, Nike, and other corporate sponsors were on hand as well. James politely greeted people, then ducked into a private room and slipped into a pair of designer jeans and a purple gingham shirt, his phone relentlessly pinging with notifications. Just two days earlier, James had joined Twitter, tweeting for the first time: Hello World, the Real King James is in the Building ‘Finally.’ His impending decision was already trending on the up-and-coming social media platform. He was also getting inundated with text messages. One was from Kanye West: Where u at?

After making a spectacle of himself by upstaging Taylor Swift at the Grammy Awards, West had been off the grid in Hawaii, working on his fifth studio album, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. Eager to witness James’s decision in person, West had made his way to Greenwich and was trying to find Dowley’s house. Without giving Dowley a heads-up, James sent West the address before sitting down with Carter and sportscaster Jim Gray to go over the program. Soon there was a knock at the front door. Stunned, Dowley’s twelve-year-old blurted out: Kanye’s here! The low-key rehearsal suddenly felt like a house party.

James had met Kanye through Jay-Z. They were friends. James was friends with a lot of rappers and hip-hop artists. They liked being in James’s orbit. They gave him backstage passes to their shows. Invited him to their parties. Sat courtside at his games. Even saluted him in their lyrics. In many respects, they didn’t just want to know LeBron, they wanted to be LeBron. As a basketball star, his fame surpassed all of them. Yet as dusk turned to dark, James was on the cusp of a whole new world of possibilities opening before him. Exiting the house with his entourage and filing into a van for a police escort to the Greenwich Boys & Girls Club, James couldn’t help wondering: How did a kid from Akron get here?

Generators hummed and satellite trucks jammed the parking lot outside the Boys & Girls Club. Thousands of people wearing NBA jerseys and holding signs—COME TO THE NETS—lined the streets. Fans stood twenty deep, chanting, Let’s go Knicks as a traffic cop with a bullhorn made a futile attempt to get them to step back. In a van trailing police officers on motorcycles, James rounded the corner as if on a float during a night parade. Flashes from cell phone cameras combined with streetlights, yellow headlights, blue and red police lights, and white spotlights outside the club to create a kaleidoscope of colors amid sirens.

Inside the van, James was nervous and thinking about leaving the Cavaliers. He quietly told Carter, Let them know.

We are coming to you live from Greenwich, Connecticut, a host in the ESPN studio in Bristol said as the network broadcast scenes from the chaos outside.

With Jay-Z’s Empire State of Mind cranking on a boom box, kids screamed and pointed when LeBron and Kanye emerged from the vehicles. Teenage children of venture capitalists and Wall Street bankers reveled in the fact that for one night their town was the center of the basketball universe.

Grade-schooler Gigi Barter was overwhelmed when she arrived with her older brothers. What’s happening? she shouted over the noise.

Her brothers had been taking her to the club for a few years. There had never been crowds outside. Giddy, her brothers explained that LeBron James was in town to announce he was joining the Knicks. It was going to be great.

Once inside, Gigi encountered a friendly face. The man who ran the club made sure she had a seat in the area cordoned off for club kids. He put her near the front, so she had a clear view of James.

A few minutes before 9:00 p.m., James stood outside the gymnasium with Savannah Brinson. Kanye stood nearby in dark sunglasses, a black blazer, and multicolored slippers. Dowley milled around inside, making sure everything was set. Rich Paul called the Cavaliers to inform the team that LeBron was leaving. To Paul this was like a divorce, and there was no easy way to break up with a spouse. Trying to soften the blow, he told the team’s general manager that this was a business decision, not a personal one.

It didn’t matter. Owner Dan Gilbert was furious. Four years earlier he had tried to lock James in with a five-year contract that would have avoided all this, but James had insisted on only signing a three-year deal. When he said, ‘I’m signing for three years,’ we should have had the balls to say, ‘Shove it,’ Gilbert told a journalist. We should’ve said, ‘Fuck you. Go. Let’s see it.’

While Paul dealt with the Cavs, James kept his focus on Brinson until an ESPN producer wearing an earpiece told him it was time.

Wish me luck, James told Brinson, and gave her a hug and a kiss. Before turning to go, he displayed his teeth and asked her to check them for food particles.

Brinson loved how he always made her laugh. She gave him the A-OK and nudged him into the gym.

Jim Gray sat in a director’s chair on a makeshift stage in the center of the gym. James sat opposite him in a matching chair. Under one basket, about sixty-five children were on folding chairs. Under the other basket and along the walls, a hundred or so adults in business attire sat in chairs. Police officers stood in the doorways. Despite being a seasoned pro, Gray looked unnerved. James appeared uncomfortable, too. Under the white lights, both men were sweating. A makeup artist touched up their foreheads. Without any cue, the audience remained as quiet as a congregation at a funeral.

From Bristol, ESPN’s Stuart Scott told viewers that they were minutes away from James’s decision. Gray’s initial questions were stilted. Time dragged as James gave vague answers. Finally, nearly thirty minutes into the broadcast, Gray said, The answer to the question everyone wants to know… LeBron, what’s your decision?

Um, this fall… Man, this is very tough. Um, this fall I’m going to take my talents to South Beach and join the Miami Heat.

A hushed gasp could be heard in the gym. Gray seemed unsure what to say next. It was as if someone had paused live television. Outside, booing erupted.

The booing reverberated in sports bars from New York to Los Angeles. In Cleveland, there were tears of disbelief. James’s nine words—I’m going to take my talents to South Beach—had rocked the NBA and its fans.

How do you explain this to the people in Cleveland? Gray asked.

Ah, it’s heartfelt for me, James tried to explain. I never wanted to leave Cleveland…. And my heart will always be around that area.

Within minutes, fans in Cleveland took to the streets, setting fire to LeBron’s jerseys and spewing profanity.

Unaware of what was transpiring back home, James stood up and stepped off the makeshift stage. He agreed to take a photo with the kids and motioned to them to come over. They swarmed him.

Older boys rushed past her, but Gigi Barter suddenly felt herself lifted into the air from behind. The man who ran the club handed her to James, who hoisted her onto his shoulders. With James’s hands wrapped around hers, Gigi gripped his thumbs. Beaming, she couldn’t believe she was on the shoulders of LeBron James. I was the smallest person in the room, she later recalled. I felt like the tallest person in the world. I literally felt like I could touch the sky.

Surrounded by children, James smiled for the camera.

After the kids were gone, James sat down for an interview with sports journalist Michael Wilbon, who was in an ESPN studio. I’ve got to ask you, Wilbon said, in Cleveland now there were places where they were burning your jersey. We’ve got some video of it right now.

James watched a monitor. Flames consumed jerseys with his name and number. In his earpiece, James heard Wilbon’s voice: If you can see that image… How do you feel about it?

One thing that I didn’t want to do was make an emotional decision, he said. I wanted to do what was best for LeBron James, and what LeBron James is gonna do to make him happy. Put the shoe on the other foot. The Cavs would have got rid of me at one point. Would my family burn down the organization? Of course not.

On television and on social media, James was getting pilloried.

He looks like a narcissistic fool, one prominent basketball writer said on ESPN.

Another basketball writer blasted the show as shameless.

A prominent journalist called LeBron an egotistical self-promoter.

One of David Letterman’s producers weighed in on Twitter: I’m keeping my 2 year old up to watch the LeBron James Special. I want her to see the exact moment our society hit rock bottom.

Even Jim Gray was getting mocked. Foreplay from Jim Gray just as satisfying as I’ve always imagined it would be, comedian Seth Meyers tweeted. Sports Illustrated’s media critic referred to Gray’s interview as the kind of milking best done on a farm.

Back at Dowley’s house, the CEO of Dowley’s agency called from Los Angeles to congratulate him on the show’s success. It was the most highly rated studio program in the history of ESPN. Thirteen million people were tuned in when James uttered the words take my talents to South Beach. Meantime, the Boys & Girls Clubs in six cities were recipients of record-setting donations to improve their facilities. But no one was talking about any of that. Instead, James was morphing into a heartless villain in real time. The New York Times had already posted a story online, declaring Miami the new Evil Empire and criticizing James for his mercenary reach for championship rings.

What we did was well intended, Dowley explained years later. But no one remembers that we gave $5 million to the Boys & Girls Club. We did a terrible job with that. It just got subsumed.

By the time James boarded a private plane for a late-night flight to Miami, Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert had worked himself into a rage. He published a letter in Comic Sans font on the team’s website that began:

Dear Cleveland:

As you know, our former hero, who grew up in the very region that he deserted this evening, is no longer a Cleveland Cavalier.

This was announced with a several day, narcissistic, self-promotional build-up culminating with a national TV special of his decision unlike anything ever witnessed in the history of sports and probably the history of entertainment….

You simply don’t deserve this kind of cowardly betrayal.

He went on to call out James for his shameful display of selfishness and betrayal and his heartless and callous action that sends the exact opposite lesson of what we would want our children to learn. With police officers stationed outside the Cavaliers’ arena to deter vandals from tearing down the giant banner of James that hung from the building’s exterior, Gilbert ended his rant with the closing sentiment Sleep well, Cleveland.

No one felt worse about the situation in Cleveland than Maverick Carter. As the self-described leader and architect of the plan for a grandiose announcement, he had badly miscalculated the outcome. Sobered by the fallout, he wanted to disappear in a hole, where he couldn’t see or hear anything.

James didn’t have that luxury. After he was in the air, James said, Fuck! What the hell just happened?

No one said a word. Rich Paul had been on a lot of flights with James and Carter. Never had he been on one so awkwardly quiet.

We fucked up, Carter said, reflecting on the situation years later. But in the moment, Carter was too dazed to weigh in.

Beleaguered, James turned inward. A big fan of Mafia figures from film and television, he had memorized lines from memorable scenes, like the time Tony Soprano felt vulnerable and tore into his consigliere for failing to protect him:

You got no fucking idea what it’s like to be number one. Every decision you make affects every facet of every other fucking thing. It’s too much to deal with almost. And in the end, you’re completely alone with it all.

James loved The Sopranos, especially Tony. But James was nothing like the fictional crime boss. For starters, James wasn’t confrontational. Rather than lash out at Carter, James held his tongue. Besides, he knew Carter felt wounded. There was no point in piling on. Plus, James valued relationships above all else. He and Carter had been best friends since James’s freshman year of high school, when they were teammates. He viewed Carter more like a brother than a business associate. He wasn’t about to do or say anything—privately or publicly—to distance himself from the decision to participate in the ESPN show. That would only embarrass Carter. Instead, James resolved to take the hit for Carter’s miscalculation.

Dan Gilbert was a different story. He had deliberately attacked James’s character and mocked his motives. Leaving Ohio was the most gut-wrenching decision James had made since joining the NBA. Akron was the only place he had ever lived. He’d fallen in love there. His children were born there. He and Savannah built their dream home there. They were so attached to their house that they planned to continue living there even after James signed his contract with the Heat. Strangely, reading Gilbert’s letter numbed the pain of choosing the Heat over the Cavaliers and convinced James he’d made the right decision. I don’t think he ever cared about me, James told himself.

It was around 3:00 a.m. when the plane touched down in Miami. Pat Riley was waiting for James on the tarmac. Exhausted and emotionally drained, James stepped off the plane and into Riley’s embrace and rested his head on his shoulder. Then James and Brinson got into an SUV. The two of them held hands as they stared out the window into the Florida darkness. James was about to find out what it was like to be public enemy number one in every NBA city other than Miami.

Pulling away from the airstrip, Savannah put things in perspective with a simple reminder: You’ve been through worse than this. Much worse.

TWO

GLO AND BRON

It was way past bedtime in a housing project in Akron, Ohio. Inside one of the units, a shy little boy with a conspicuous name was hungry, awake, and alone. Fatherless, he lived with his mother. Just the two of them. But she was gone. Out for the night. She might be home by morning. Might not. Sometimes Mom disappeared for a few nights in a row.

Praying she’d return soon, the boy finally drifted off to sleep, only to be awakened by familiar sounds. Men yelling. A woman pleading. Gunfire. People scattering. Sirens. Doors slamming. More yelling. More sirens.

The boy didn’t need an imagination to picture the danger around him. On plenty of occasions he’d seen things no child should see. Violence. Drug abuse. A menacing gang member. An intimidating cop. But it was the nighttime noises that unsettled him the most. He always knew when bad things were happening.

In these instances, there was no choice, he figured, but to lie there and wait for things to quiet down. Even then it was hard to fall back asleep. Some nights his anxiety made it impossible. Although he’d conditioned himself to block out what was going on around him, young LeBron James had one overriding concern—waking up and finding his mother alive and safe. Already without a father, he couldn’t bear the thought of losing his mother.

During those dark childhood days, LeBron learned to fend for himself at an early age. Like it or not, he said, that’s how my mom treated me. Yet LeBron never doubted his mother’s love. He only questioned her whereabouts. When you’re there and you know your mother’s not home, LeBron said, you never know if those police sirens are for her. Or if those gunshots were intended towards her. So those are the nights, almost every night, that would stand [out]—hearing those sounds and hoping and wishing that it wasn’t your parent on the other end.

LeBron eventually grew to love Akron. His character was forged there. His athletic gifts were discovered and shaped there. And his genius as an entertainer reflected his time in that place. But as a child, when he longed for security and companionship, he would often tell himself, If I’m ever lucky enough to find a way out, I’m going to run as fast as I can.

In 2009, LeBron James published a memoir about his high school years and the journey to winning a national championship as a senior. When the book came out, he was the NBA’s reigning MVP. Yet he made his high school teammates the focus of his story. He even put them on the cover. In many respects, his approach to the book was the same as the way he played basketball, instinctively sharing the ball—sometimes, his critics insist, to a fault—and emphasizing team success over individual achievement. Whether intentional or not, by putting the spotlight on his friends and their respective backgrounds, LeBron downplayed key aspects of his own backstory. In that respect, the most tantalizing passage of his memoir may have been hidden on the dedication page:

To my mother, without whom I would not be where I am today

Readers routinely skip past dedication pages. And without context, LeBron’s one-sentence tribute hardly seems revelatory. Nonetheless, it hints at hard and beautiful truths. On one hand, it holds clues to why LeBron is such a hands-on father and loyal husband. Similarly, it’s a predicate to why he has devoted so much of his personal fortune to feed, clothe, and educate needy children, especially in Akron. Even the improbable durability of LeBron’s tight inner circle stems from that statement. On the other hand, his pithy homage to his mother makes crystal clear that one of the richest, most successful athletes on the planet remembers his roots. Moreover, he looks back on them with appreciation and pride rather than resentment or shame.

Yet LeBron’s origin story begs for illumination. Famous for his savant-like ability to recall game sequences in staggering detail or pull obscure statistics out of his head as if reading from a cheat sheet, he has a much more selective memory when discussing details about his childhood. This is not a self-serving exercise in deception. Rather, it says a lot about a son’s inclination to shield his mother and her past from the unforgiving spotlight he lives under.

But this much is clear: when it comes to understanding LeBron James, all roads lead back to Gloria James and Akron, Ohio.

Dionne Warwick was America’s number one female vocalist and her hit single I Say a Little Prayer had just surpassed 1 million copies sold when Freda M. James gave birth to Gloria Marie James on February 4, 1968. The lyrics—The moment I wake up / Before I put on my makeup / I say a little prayer for you—were intended to be a love song about a devoted woman praying for her man. In Freda’s case, the song was more reflective of the way she looked at her baby girl. Freda’s marriage was no fairy tale. Less than a year after Gloria’s birth, Freda and her husband split up. Gross neglect and extreme cruelty were listed in court records as the grounds for divorce. Freda was in her early twenties. In addition to Gloria, she had two little boys. To make ends meet, Freda took a blue-collar job at the Western Reserve Psychiatric Habilitation Center and lived with her mother in a dilapidated Victorian at 439 Hickory Street, a dirt road bordered by railroad tracks on the edge of downtown Akron. The neighborhood was known as the Boondocks. Gloria grew up there with her mother and her grandmother.

Shortly after turning sixteen, Gloria got pregnant. During pregnancy she briefly stopped attending high school. On December 30, 1984, she gave birth at Akron City Hospital to a six-pound-ten-ounce baby boy she named LeBron Raymone James. The identity of the father remains one of the great mysteries of modern sports. Gloria preferred never to speak of LeBron’s father, not even to LeBron. Once, when LeBron was a child, he asked his mother about his father’s whereabouts. She shut that shit down early, LeBron recalled. Rather than get into the father’s identity, Gloria told her son not to worry about him. It’s me and you, she told him. LeBron stopped asking about his father.

Gloria had her reasons for not telling her son about his father. LeBron, meanwhile, was cut off from one of the primary roots in his family tree. His father’s invisibility and the dearth of information explaining his identity and whereabouts led to bitterness. I grew up resenting my father, LeBron said. Everything was like, ‘Fuck Pops.’ You know, he left me. Why would he do that to my mom? She was a sophomore in high school when she had me.

When Gloria left the hospital with her newborn and brought him home to the Boondocks, the chances that her baby would become one of the most successful Black men in American history and one of the most recognizable people on earth were unimaginable. Gloria was a poor, teenage, single mother who was relying on her own thirty-nine-year-old single mother and her grandmother to help her adjust and learn how to care for a newborn. Almost immediately, the road ahead got even steeper. Shortly after LeBron’s birth, Gloria’s grandmother died. It was a blow to Freda, who assumed full responsibility over the household and became the sole stabilizing force for Gloria and LeBron. When Gloria returned to high school, Freda hoped her only daughter would graduate and that her only grandson would survive. Under the circumstances, these were lofty expectations.

Before LeBron’s first birthday, Gloria started seeing Eddie Jackson, a twenty-year-old who had run track at her high school. Like a lot of young Black men in Akron in the eighties, Jackson struggled to find work. Instead, he found trouble. Before long, he needed a place to live and wanted to move in with Gloria. Freda had a reputation for taking in kids who had fallen on hard times, including some whose troubles were the result of poor choices. Jackson fit that description. Not one to judge, Freda allowed Jackson to live under her roof.

To meet Gloria’s mother, you would’ve met the most wonderful person in the world, Jackson once said. If she trusted you, she loved you. If she didn’t, she’d tell you to get the hell out of her face. And Gloria was the same way.

While forming a close relationship with Gloria, Jackson also took a liking to LeBron. Days before LeBron’s third birthday, Gloria and Eddie got him a Little Tikes basketball hoop and a miniature rubber basketball. The plan was to surprise LeBron on Christmas morning. It would be a Kodak moment, a chance to see little Bron Bron, as Gloria liked to call him, score for the first time. But early Christmas morning, Gloria and Eddie were the ones who got a surprise—Freda had suffered a heart attack sometime after midnight on Christmas Eve. Gloria and Eddie came home from a late-night party and found her on the floor. She was pronounced dead at St. Thomas Hospital. She was forty-two.

Gloria faced despair. In a three-year span she had gotten pregnant, withdrawn from school, given birth, lost her grandmother, returned to school while caring for a newborn, welcomed a live-in boyfriend, graduated, and, now, lost her mother. Life was suddenly going from precarious to frightening. How would she manage without her mother?

Determined that her child was going to have a merry Christmas, Gloria decided not to tell LeBron that his grandmother was gone until after he opened his presents. There was no ham in the oven, no stereo system with Nat King Cole singing about chestnuts roasting on an open fire and tiny tots with their eyes all aglow. The paint on the drafty living room windowsills was chipped. The curtains were faded and stained. But there was a small Christmas tree with red and silver garland. Later that morning, LeBron discovered a plastic basketball hoop with an orange rim and a red, white, and blue net towering above the other gifts. After opening everything else, he took the miniature orange ball with two hands, extended his arms above his head, rose up on his tippy toes, and managed to get the ball over the lip of the rim and through the net. LeBron smiled and a camera clicked. It was the last time Gloria would put up a Christmas tree during LeBron’s childhood. Christmas is not a happy time for me, Gloria said. I pretty much had to step up and take care of things, and I was nowhere near prepared to deal with it all.

Freda M. James Howard was buried in Akron on LeBron’s third birthday, December 30, 1987. She is survived by daughter, Gloria James; sons, Terry and Curtis James; and grandson LeBron, her obituary read. With Freda’s death, Gloria’s safety net was gone. She had no childcare. She had no money. And she had no wherewithal to manage her mother’s big, run-down house. The plumbing was failing. There were electrical problems. Her brothers lived there, too. But they weren’t in a position to help, either. Nor was Jackson. He was unemployed and had his own personal struggles. Although he stayed in touch with Gloria, he moved elsewhere.

Meantime, Gloria couldn’t even afford groceries and heat. Over the winter, a neighbor stopped in and found the house unfit for a toddler—dirty dishes spilling out of the kitchen sink, a hole forming in the living room floor, temperatures cold enough to make your breath visible. It’s not safe here, the neighbor told Gloria, imploring her to bring LeBron and move in with her. That day, Gloria stuffed what she could fit into a suitcase and bade farewell to her mother’s home. With a miniature backpack and a stuffed animal, LeBron followed his mother to the neighbor’s place. It didn’t have a spare bedroom. But there was a couch. For the next few months, Gloria and LeBron slept on it. Then they moved in with one of Gloria’s cousins. Then with a guy Gloria knew. Then with one of Gloria’s brothers. While the city proceeded to condemn and eventually bulldoze her mother’s house on Hickory Street, Gloria and LeBron lived like nomads. During this period, people who knew them referred to them as Glo and Bron, a mother and son just trying to survive. I can remember numerous times when my son and I ran out of food and went hungry, Gloria said. What kept us going was help from friends, family, and the community.

With his mother barely getting by on welfare and food stamps, LeBron struggled to form friendships with classmates or establish bonds with teachers. Without a permanent address, he frequently changed schools and developed into a quiet kid who seldom spoke up. I was a scared, lonely young boy, LeBron said.

Despite the absence of a father and the inability of his mother to support the two of them on her own, LeBron never grumbled or acted out. Sensitive to his mother’s plight, he tried not to add to her stress level. Being uprooted as a very young child is no way to live, LeBron said. But complaining would do no good. It would only have put more pressure on my mom, who already felt guilty enough.

As LeBron put it years later, during his childhood he felt like so many African American boys who get lost in the hardness of life. I didn’t like looking for trouble, he said, because I didn’t like trouble. But I was on the edge of falling to an abyss from which I could never escape.

A chance encounter in the summer of 1993 altered the course of LeBron’s life, revealing for the first time a potential pathway that would eventually lead him out of the hopelessness that had enveloped him. While LeBron was playing with some other boys his age outside an apartment complex, a man named Bruce Kelker approached. Kelker was an acquaintance of Gloria’s. He was also a peewee football coach.

You guys like football? Kelker asked the group.

That’s my favorite sport, LeBron said.

At this point, LeBron had not played on a team. Nor had he received any basic instructions, such as how to properly throw or catch or tackle. He had, however, seen NFL games on television. Pro football had a magical quality with the colorful uniforms, big shoulder pads, shiny helmets, and mythical team names like Steelers and Cowboys and Giants and Lions. LeBron liked to draw and he would frequently sketch the logos of his favorite NFL teams on a pad that he kept in his backpack.

Kelker was looking for someone to play running back for his team, which meant he needed speed. He lined the boys up and had them run a footrace. LeBron left everyone in the dust.

How much football have you played? Kelker asked him.

None, LeBron told him.

Determined to change that, Kelker wanted LeBron to start attending practices. But first he had to deal with Gloria. She was loud and clear that she didn’t have money for the registration or the uniform. She didn’t have a car, either. So there was no way to get him to practices. More important, she wasn’t sure that such a physical game was right for her son—he was a quiet, reserved kid, not an aggressive one. How do I even know football will be good for Bron Bron? she asked.

Kelker was convinced that LeBron would be a great addition to his team. And he persuaded Gloria that football would be great for her son. He promised to take care of the registration and uniform costs. And he told her that she wouldn’t have to worry about transportation. I’ll pick him up, he said.

Gloria could have said no. But it was evident that LeBron wanted to join the team. So she agreed. And it didn’t take her long to recognize that she had made the right decision. The first time LeBron was handed the ball in a game, he raced eighty yards for a touchdown. Adults cheered. Teammates encircled him. Coaches smacked him on the shoulder pads and shouted words of encouragement.

LeBron wasn’t used to the attention and praise, especially from male figures. But scoring felt exhilarating. That feeling and the sense of acceptance that it generated was repeated over and over that fall. LeBron scored seventeen touchdowns during his first season of peewee football. Defenders couldn’t catch him, much less tackle him.

For Kelker and the rest of the coaching staff, it was easy to see that LeBron was far and away the best player in his age group. They also couldn’t ignore that his home life was fraught with risk. While on a waiting list for subsidized housing, Gloria and LeBron had moved five times in a three-month span. I was tired of picking him up at different addresses, Kelker said. Or showing up at one junked-up place and finding out they had already moved to another.

At least football provided some structure. But when the season ended, LeBron was totally adrift. That year, as a fourth grader, he missed nearly one hundred days of school. Things were so dysfunctional that LeBron’s peewee coaches wanted to take him in. But most of them were younger single men who weren’t well equipped to take on the responsibility of a nine-year-old. The one exception was Frank Walker, the coach everyone called Big Frankie. Walker worked for the Akron Metropolitan Housing Authority. His wife, Pam, worked for an Ohio congressman. They owned a home and had three children.

Walker cared more about LeBron’s personal welfare than his athletic prowess. And he knew that LeBron was hurting and needed a lifeline. It was apparent that he had seen and experienced hard things that had sapped some of the joy in his life and made him mature beyond his years.

The Walkers approached Gloria about having LeBron move in with them. It was a difficult subject to broach. Gloria knew she wasn’t able to provide LeBron a stable home life. She didn’t need any reminders that her situation was adversely affecting LeBron. He didn’t have a normal childhood, Gloria said. I mean, hell, he done lived in some of the worst projects in town. Still, the notion of putting her son into the hands of another couple—especially another mother—was an agonizing one. She barely knew Pam Walker.

Without passing judgment on Gloria, the Walkers were offering to give LeBron security and family structure. He could share a room with Frankie Jr. There would be three square meals a day. He’d have a set bedtime. And school attendance would be an integral part of his daily routine. Frank made it clear that they had LeBron’s best interests in mind.

Gloria knew she needed help. I hated raising him that way—moving, moving, and moving, Gloria said. I truly hated it. She added, I wouldn’t wish some of the stuff we went through on anyone. Not on my worst enemy.

Twenty-five years after her mother had gone through a divorce and taken on the full weight of raising her and her two brothers all on her own, Gloria was contemplating something potentially more traumatic. She could only pray that one day LeBron would come to understand that the lyrics from that old Dionne Warwick song that came out the year she was born summed up how she felt about him:

To live without you would only mean heartbreak for me.

My darling, believe me,

For me, there is no one but you.

Gloria accepted the Walkers’ offer.

THREE

IF YOU PASS THE BALL

Bewildered, LeBron listened as his mother informed him she needed to get her life to a better place. Until then, she told him, he’d be moving in with the Walkers. It wasn’t clear where exactly she was going. The point was that they’d be apart.

The news was disorienting. It had always been them against the world. Glo and Bron. Suddenly it was just going to be Bron.

It was for the best, she tried to explain.

Best? To him it sounded unimaginable and frightening.

The situation wouldn’t be permanent, she insisted, trying to soften the blow.

Would he see her?

She’d try to visit, she told him, as often as possible.

And she promised they’d be reunited once her life was more stable.

It was a lot to process for a nine-year-old.

LeBron didn’t know what to expect when he arrived at the Walkers’ three-bedroom Colonial on Hillwood Drive. He met the two daughters. And he put his things in Frankie Jr.’s room, where he’d be sleeping. LeBron was eighteen months older than Frankie Jr., and a superior athlete. Would Mrs. Walker resent him for that? What about the sisters? Would they accept him? LeBron had lots of questions, none of which he voiced.

There were also a lot of rules. LeBron was expected to wake up each morning at six o’clock to bathe and get ready for school. He had to be on time. And after school, homework came before anything else. The family ate dinner together each night. Afterward, there were chores—taking out the trash, doing the dishes, sweeping. And if he took a bath before bed, he could sleep in until six forty-five.

It was all foreign to LeBron. A schedule. A routine. Chores. He’d never emptied a garbage can or washed dishes or used a broom or a vacuum. Even the idea of being part of a family was new. The Walkers’ eldest daughter didn’t want anything to do with him. But LeBron soon discovered that she felt the same toward her younger brother. He and Frankie Jr. were instant buddies. And LeBron could tell that the youngest daughter looked up to him. It felt like having a little sister.

Even LeBron’s school was new. The Walkers enrolled him in fifth grade at Portage Path Elementary, one of Akron’s oldest schools, where more than 90 percent of the students were African American and most of them were on the free-lunch program. His teacher, Karen Grindall, took a personal interest in him. Years earlier she had taught Gloria and was familiar with some of the tumult in her past. Initially, Grindall worried that history might repeat itself with LeBron. However, he quickly established himself as one of her most disciplined students. He never missed school. He was always on time. And he never caused trouble. His favorite classes were music, art, and gym.

While he settled in at school, his reputation as a dominant youth football player grew. He even started to get his name in the paper. That fall, the Akron Beacon Journal reported: The East B1 team ran only 11 offensive plays but scored on five of them to beat Patterson Park 34–8 last week in a Pee-Wee Football Association game. LeBron James scored three of the TDs, running for 50 and 18 yards for two of them and catching a 28-yard pass from Michael Smith for the other.

The recognition was a confidence booster. It especially helped to have Big Frankie Walker as his coach and Pam Walker looking after him at home. He no longer had to worry about storing his uniform and pads in the trunk of someone’s car or wonder how he was going to get back and forth to practice. The cadence of a busy home life with two working parents who kept to a schedule suited him well. I got the stability I craved, LeBron said. I loved being part of the flow that is a family…. I saw how life was meant to be lived.

One day that fall, Big Frankie took LeBron and Frankie Jr. to shoot hoops in the backyard. Having seen how easily LeBron excelled in football, Walker introduced him to basketball, too, and showed him some fundamentals—how to dribble, how to shoot a jump shot, how to make a layup.

LeBron welcomed the experience of receiving instruction from a father figure. And he immediately embraced the adventure of trying to put a ball through a rim ten feet above the ground. The sensation of making a basket was akin to what he felt every time he reached the end zone with a football.

Walker noticed that although LeBron’s dribbling ability was rudimentary and sloppy, he seemed predisposed to try to dribble with either hand, something most kids don’t bother to learn. His long arms and leaping ability also impressed Walker. He had LeBron and his son play against each other.

LeBron had never played one-on-one. But he eagerly accepted the challenge.

Frankie Jr. loved basketball and had been playing with his father for a couple of years. He beat LeBron. But the fact that a nine-year-old who had never tried basketball was picking up the game so easily confirmed Walker’s initial hunch—he needed to start taking LeBron to the gym.

The year that LeBron moved in with the Walkers, Walt Disney released The Lion King, and it quickly became the top-grossing animated film in history. The first time LeBron saw it, he couldn’t believe it when Scar killed Mufasa. The treachery stunned him and brought tears to his eyes. LeBron loved the movie. But each time he watched it, that scene had the same effect on him.

There was a sentimental side to LeBron that he kept hidden away. One of the consequences of being driven from pillar to post for his entire childhood was that he suppressed his emotions and said as little as possible. He had trouble trusting adults. And he was reluctant to form friendships with kids, fearing his friends would disappear every time he and his mother picked up and moved on. The Walker home changed that. It was an emotionally safe place that opened LeBron’s eyes to how much he had missed out on. He had watched Family Matters and The Cosby Show and often wondered what it would be like to be part of a middle-class African American family like the Winslows or an upper-class African American family like the Huxtables. The Walkers were the closest thing to those fictional families that LeBron had ever seen. Mr. and Mrs. Walker were loyal to each other and put the welfare of their children above all else. There were home-cooked meals and folded laundry, expectations and consequences for the children, birthday parties and holiday celebrations. Family was like a refuge.

For LeBron, living in the Walker home was also an opportunity to see a father in action and contemplate feelings he had long stifled. Out of respect for his mother’s wishes, he never asked about his father. But fatherlessness inevitably causes a child to wonder, Why didn’t he want me? While Big Frankie was taking LeBron under his wing, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air ran an episode titled Papa’s Got a Brand New Excuse. In that episode, Will Smith’s deadbeat father, Lou, finally shows up after fourteen years. Will loved living with his uncle Phil’s family at the time, much the same way that LeBron loved living with Big Frankie’s family. Yet as soon as Will’s father showed up and indicated he wanted to take his son with him, Will packed his bag and was ready to go. Then on the day they were supposed to leave together, Will’s father ditched him. Seeing the heartbreak on Will’s face, Uncle Phil comforted him by telling him it was okay to be angry. Will tried to pretend he wasn’t hurt. Ain’t like I’m gonna be sittin’ up every night, askin’ my mom, ‘When’s Daddy comin’ home,’ he said. Who needs him? He wasn’t there to teach me how to shoot my first basket.

As LeBron watched the show, the story line hit home. It was as if Will Smith were speaking for him. For the first time, LeBron heard something that captured the pain he felt. Even the anger was authentic.

You know what, Uncle Phil? Smith boomed. I’m gonna get a great job without him. I’m gonna marry me a beautiful honey and I’m gonna have me a whole bunch of kids. I’m gonna be a better father than he ever was… Because there ain’t a damn thing he could ever teach me about how to love my kids!

When Smith started crying, LeBron started crying.

How come he don’t want me, man? Smith asked Uncle Phil, who put his arms around him.

The episode aired during a watershed year in LeBron’s life. In various ways, Big Frankie became LeBron’s Uncle Phil. Most days he picked up LeBron from school and drove him home from school. He taught him how to play basketball. And he steadily complimented him in ways that gave LeBron self-confidence. This young man right here, Walker would proudly tell people, pointing to LeBron, if he wants to be president of the United States, he can be the president of the United States. It was the kind of thing a proud father would say. But Walker meant it. He doesn’t get the recognition he deserves, LeBron would say of Walker many years later. But he was the first one to give me a basketball and the first one to really show an interest.

Besides introducing LeBron to basketball, perhaps the most transformative impact Walker had on LeBron was putting him in an environment to meet other hardworking fathers who cared about the young boys in inner-city Akron. One of the men that LeBron met while living with the Walkers was Dru Joyce II. He would end up being the most influential coach LeBron encountered in his development as a basketball prodigy.

As a young man, Joyce had aspired to coach football for a living. But by the time Joyce graduated from Ohio University in 1978, his top priority was supporting his wife and raising a family. He set aside his dream of being a professional coach and took a job at Hunt-Wesson, a subsidiary of ConAgra, where he worked his way up to the position of senior sales rep. After he became a district manager, Joyce settled his family in Akron, where he and his wife, Carolyn, had two daughters. Then in January 1985—one month after LeBron was born—the Joyces had a son. They named him Dru Joyce III. He got his nickname Little Dru early on. When it became clear that his son preferred basketball over football, Joyce started coaching his son’s youth basketball team in an Akron recreational league. That’s when Joyce encountered young LeBron James.

Familiar with LeBron’s budding reputation as an outstanding football player, Joyce watched with curiosity as he played point guard in a game against other boys his age. His ballhandling skills needed work, Joyce thought. But LeBron was at least four inches taller than everyone else. And he was using his size advantage to back defenders down the court, dribbling himself into position to score with relative ease. His skills were raw, but his instincts were advanced.

Before long, LeBron and Little Dru started playing ball together. LeBron liked him right away. Little Dru seldom spoke off the court. But on the court, he wasn’t shy about telling LeBron what to do. Despite being the shortest guy on the floor, he acted like a coach. LeBron started calling him the General. Little Dru had been playing basketball since he was four or five years old. But LeBron was so much bigger and stronger that he could beat Little Dru one-on-one. After every defeat, Little Dru would demand they go again. And again. And again. He had what LeBron referred to as little man complex. Kids laughed at Little Dru and called him Smurf, after the small blue cartoon creatures. It all contributed to the monumental chip on Little Dru’s shoulder, inspiring him to work harder than all the other kids to prove himself. LeBron liked the way he would take on anybody, no matter the size disadvantage. For the first time, LeBron had a friend his own age who he didn’t fear would disappear.

Fifth grade taught LeBron that he liked school. He went the entire school year without an absence. His perfect attendance record was a source of pride. It was particularly rewarding to see the look of approval in Pam Walker’s eyes. She had been on him all year to keep his grades up and to aim high. With his athleticism, she repeatedly told him, he could earn a college scholarship. No one had ever mentioned college to LeBron before. The word scholarship wasn’t even in his vocabulary. Mrs. Walker assured him he’d be able to get into any college he chose. He just needed to keep his grades up. His talent would take care of the rest.

LeBron had come to realize that his initial fears that Mrs. Walker might resent him for his athletic ability had been ill founded. There was no jealousy over the fact that LeBron was better than her son at sports. On the contrary, she treated LeBron like a fourth