No Intro Needed

Multimillionaire, global icon, the NBA’s greatest draw since Michael Jordan ...

What’s left for LeBron James to do?

Of course, there’s his actual NBA career, which hasn’t started yet. Not that this story has gotten ahead of itself, but at halftime of the Cleveland Cavaliers’ exhibition opener here, he has two points, having missed every shot longer than a dunk. One week and two more exhibitions later, he’s averaging 8.0 points and shooting 33%.

There are 20,862 people in the Palace for his debut. A Detroit Piston official estimates for a normal exhibition against the Cavaliers, they’d get about 3,000, which means 7,000 season-ticket holders would have stayed home.

The national media has turned out in force too, giving a breathless quality to everything, however mundane. When the team bus pulls into the arena before the morning shoot-around, four TV cameramen rush around to the front to capture ... James getting off a bus!

Cavalier publicist Bill Evans, setting up the press scrum, asks: “Besides Paul [Silas, the coach] and LeBron, does anyone want any of our other players?”

Says someone: “Do you have other players?”

This story now embodies the word “hype” as it feeds on itself before James has done a thing, but it’s not, as skeptics say, the invention of the league, the media or the sneaker companies. Believe this: If any of them could actually create such a phenomenon, there would be more of them.

Something this big can only flow from the public’s response, which in this case is huge. Advance ticket sales already project the Cavaliers as the league’s second-biggest road draw this season, after the Lakers. Nike signed James to a $90-million deal, twice as much as Jordan, Shaquille O’Neal, Kobe Bryant and Allen Iverson got in their first sneaker deals, combined. Coca-Cola signed James to a $12-million deal, bigger than Atlanta Falcon quarterback Michael Vick’s.

Before James embarked on his first NBA season, he had a Jordan/David Beckham-type off-season, making a presentation with Julius Erving at the ESPY awards, dominating the summer league in Orlando, Fla., where they moved his games from the Magic’s practice facility into the sold-out T.D. Waterhouse Centre, dominating the Shaw summer league outside Boston, going back home to Akron, Ohio, where Nike had arranged for Greg Anthony and an ESPN crew to follow him as he talked to kids at his old school, Margaret Pack Elementary.

Only one person seems to understand how absurd it gets and it’s the golden child himself. Notes James, sitting in a classroom at Pack, in an off-hand, on-camera comment to a friend:

“I’m telling kids what to do and I’m, like, only 18.”

Whatever he is, he’s changing the ground rules, or confirming the new ones.

Commissioner David Stern tried for years to get a rule discouraging young players from leaving school early. It wasn’t only idealism, it was good business, recalling the days when the NBA reaped promotional windfalls from the arrival of players such as Duke’s Grant Hill, who was a star after going to the NCAA Final Four three times.

Now, along comes James, who’s already a bigger sensation than Hill ever was -- commercially -- without benefit of college or Final Four appearances.

Coincidentally or not, Stern now downplays his opposition to the Children’s Crusade, even as he gushes over James’ impact. At last spring’s NBA Finals, asked the annual question about the imbalance between West and East, Stern noted: “For myself, these things are ebbs and flows. Let’s see how LeBron James and Darko Milicic add to the fabric of the East.”

Because the Cavaliers went 17-65 last season, it might be a tad early to expect an 18-year-old to gather them up and redress the balance of power. Nevertheless, James’ impact -- commercially -- suggests to Stern that his league has still got it.

“I am stunned by the emergence of the fanfare around LeBron James,” Stern said recently. “Here we have two of the most sophisticated marketers in Nike and Coca-Cola, who have invested tens of millions of dollars in a market-place investment that this professional basketball player is a professional icon....

“It’s great for LeBron, but it says wonders about the NBA on the global stage.”

Of course, this all adds up to monumental pressure on the prodigy, but he’s comfortable at the center of the hurricane that follows him everywhere, including to Staples Center for an exhibition against the Lakers tonight.

“This?” he said after his exhibition debut, pushed up against a wall by a 50-person gaggle of cameras, microphones and tape recorders.

“I handle this. This goes on every day all day. It’s not hard for me.”

Just wait.

The Legend and the Kid

“They [young players] get so spoiled so early.... The thing that I think separates him from so many players, he truly respects the game. That’s why I’m so excited about him coming in the league.

“I haven’t read anything about him wanting to lead the league in scoring or making the All-Star team. It’s all about making his teammates better, helping Cleveland get back to winning basketball. And that’s what young people need to hear.”

-- Detroit Coach Larry Brown

on James

When LeBron was a little baby, sitting on his mommy’s knee, picked up a hammer and a cold piece of steel....

Oh, right, that was John Henry.

James is already a minor legend in his own right. Even purists such as Brown are getting sucked in because they love James’ old-school approach, playmaking skills and feel for the game.

Brown, an NCAA coach in NBA designer clothing, bristles at the hype around the coming “matchup” between James and Milicic, the Pistons’ No. 1 pick.

However, Brown is blown away by James. He says he first heard of LeBron when he was in the eighth grade, from a former teammate whose son was on the team.

Actually, in eighth grade James was just OK. A year later, as a freshman at Akron St. Vincent-St. Mary High, he played on a state champion but wasn’t the star. That was Maverick Carter, who’s still with him as No. 1 sidekick.

However, from eighth grade to the end of his freshman year, James grew from 6 feet to 6-6. Word of his exploits as a sophomore were such that the columnists from Cleveland began driving down to see what the fuss was all about.

The summer after his sophomore year, he tore up the Adidas camp in Hackensack, N.J., including a memorable duel with Lenny Cooke, considered the nation’s top prep until James ran him over. ESPN got part of it on tape, showing Cooke putting on a fancy dribbling show and taking wild jumpers, and James driving past him and laying the ball up.

In James’ junior year, he had a more celebrated shootout with Oak Hill Academy and Carmelo Anthony in Trenton, N.J., with half the NBA’s general managers in the stands, having driven up from the All-Star weekend in Philadelphia. Everyone came back, raving about James. Amazingly, noted then-Boston Celtic GM Chris Wallace, the pros were in agreement to a man, even the ones who hated to have to scout preps. Danny Ainge, then a Turner commentator, said he’d take James over Yao Ming or Jay Williams, who would go 1-2 in that spring’s draft. Sports Illustrated put James on its cover.

Even with the insiders ga-ga, no one ever saw anything like James’ senior season, with cable TV showing his games nationally and St. Vincent-St. Mary booking its coast-to-coast tour, before James, who was now driving a Hummer, was suspended for accepting two retro jerseys, sued and won reinstatement.

Not that any of it, the furor or the controversy, ever got to James that anyone could see.

“No, not at all,” he says. “Every time I got suspended, the next game, I averaged 50. I had 102 points in two games after I was suspended.”

The most remarkable thing about this young man is not his skill level or that bionic 6-7, 230-pound body or that 40-inch vertical leap, but the poise with which he handles a crush, the likes of which no teenage hooper has ever seen.

At 18, Kevin Garnett was polite but wary. At 18, Bryant was gracious but reserved.

At 18, James say he’s “living a dream,” and looks like it.

He has no bodyguards. There are no rules for when he can be interviewed. Silas wants to maintain the principle of treating him like everyone else, so the Cavaliers don’t do the modern news conference format.

James grew up in the projects. His father went to jail and his mother had brushes with the law too. LeBron all but dropped out of school when he was at Pack and sometimes went to live with friends.

His background still nips at his heels. Last week, Gloria James and her old boyfriend, Eddie Jackson, who’s serving a three-year sentence for fraud at a federal prison in Loretto, Pa., were sued by an agent who said he loaned them $100,000. LeBron’s agent, Aaron Goodwin, acknowledged the loans, setting the actual figure at $149,000.

Somehow, James came out of it as a basketball prodigy, a solid student and a confident young man.

“The good Lord blessed some of us,” Silas said, “[but] very rarely does He give us everything. Mike [Jordan], I think He gave him the whole package. And this kid right here. I’m not saying that [James will be as good] yet but he’s got a chance....

“He’s just got it. That’s all you can say. That’s the only way to explain it.”

This Is Just Like

High School, Almost

“I don’t really think there’s any difference [from high school], outside of not going to class no more.”

-- James, before his debut

Then he went out and scored eight points against the Pistons.

For the record, Garnett scored 14 in his exhibition debut against the Milwaukee Bucks in Aberdeen, S.D., and Bryant 10 in his against the Dallas Mavericks in Fresno.

As rookies, Garnett averaged 10.4 points a game, Bryant 7.6 and no one called either of them a bust. Of course, neither got to make a presentation at the ESPYs. Now with the greatest hype any rookie ever got come the greatest expectations any rookie ever faced.

“It’s still a concern because how do you live up to those expectations?” says Silas. “ ... I don’t think anyone can live up to the expectations that people put on him and he and I haven’t really discussed it much. I will at an appropriate time, when things are going a little badly for him.

“That’s when he’s going to need me.”

Like ... now?

There are actually many differences between high school -- where LeBron was heard exclaiming “King James!” after dunks and occasionally referred to himself in the third person (“LeBron stays humble just by being LeBron”) -- and the pros.

Now he has reason to be humble as the crowds pour in and opponents get psyched as if he were Jordan in his prime. Said Detroit’s Ben Wallace before the ballyhooed exhibition opener: “We’re going to let him know it ain’t going to be no cakewalk. This is the real deal. He’s in with the big boys now.”

After James lit up the Hawks to the tune of six points in his next exhibition, Atlanta’s Jason Terry said he looked “like just another rookie to me, nothing spectacular.”

James’ passing is as good as advertised, but everything else needs work, especially his shooting. Unlike other hyped kids, he doesn’t force things; on the contrary, he fits in too well, to the point you almost don’t know he’s there. He has already been obliged to note, “I don’t have anything to prove to anyone. I know how to play the game of basketball. When my team needs me to take more shots, I’ll be there for them.”

If he’s brash in conversation, 32 shots and two free throws in three exhibitions suggest his inner reality is something else. In an intrasquad game, he scores only 10, putting him behind Ricky Davis (24), J.R. Bremer (19), Darius Miles (13) and fellow rookie Jason Kapono (12).

Of course, it’s early yet. Actually, it hasn’t even officially begun.

“I’m trying to expand my game,” James said in Detroit. “I need to. Coach Silas has told us, ‘If you’ve got an open shot, you need to shoot the ball and if you don’t shoot it, you’re going to be on the bench.’ So I don’t want to be over there.”

The poise is still there. Of course, as James notes at every stop, as much attention as he’s getting in the pros, he got more in high school.

“I’m kind of used to it now,” he says. “I’m just living a dream right now, and God put me on this earth to carry out a legacy. That’s what I’m trying to do.”

First, he has to be a rookie. The legacy awaits farther down the road.

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

It’s Good to Be LeBron

LeBron James has yet to play an official NBA game and he already has been a big hit on and off the court. A look:

* March -- Led St. Vincent-St. Mary to its third Ohio high school championship in four seasons and took MVP honors at the McDonald’s all-star game.

* May -- Signed an endorsement deal with Nike worth $90 million. Also signed a multiyear deal with trading card and memorabilia company Upper Deck.

* June -- Selected by the Cleveland Cavaliers with the No. 1 pick in the NBA draft.

* July -- Presented an award with Julius Erving at the ESPY Awards held at the Kodak Theatre.

* August -- Signed endorsement deal with Coca-Cola worth $13 million. Attended the MTV Video Music Awards in New York and got a kiss from R&B; singer Ashanti.

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By the Numbers

Charting LeBron James’ first three games with the Cavaliers in the exhibition season:

*--* DATE OPP MIN FG 3PT FT AST REB STL TO PF PTS Oct. 7 Detroit 26 4-12 0-1 0-0 7 3 1 3 2 8 Oct. 8 Atlanta 31 3-7 0-0 0-0 3 3 2 3 3 6 Oct. 13 Milwaukee 28 4-14 0-2 2-2 3 6 1 3 0 10

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