Coming of Age

At last, the all-time great turns 21!

If you want to know how much the world has speeded up, LeBron James celebrated his birthday in a manner worthy of a modern prodigy, dining with 65 friends and relatives in a private room in the House of Blues in downtown Cleveland before going downstairs to rap with Lil Wayne and party with a crowd of 1,000 who paid from $50 to $300 to attend. A part of the proceeds was earmarked for charity; no one said what the other part was earmarked for.

If he became an adult two weeks ago, he grew up long before that. At 21, he was a three-year NBA veteran with 4,649 points, more than twice as much as anyone had ever scored by then (Kobe Bryant had 2,254, Kevin Garnett 2,144.)

At James’ current average of 30.6, he’ll break Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s record of 38,387 -- at 34. If he were to play to 42 as Kareem did, James would be looking at something around 50,000, even allowing for a decline to a sedate 20 a game after 35.

Of course, we’re getting just a tad ahead of ourselves, but no one ever arrived with James’ hype, let alone lived up to it. In the NBA, where awe is usually withheld until someone wins something, he’s already a folk hero, like Paul Bunyan.

“He’s a freak of nature,” Boston Celtic Coach Doc Rivers said. “He would be an All-Pro in football. And I don’t even know what he plays, but whatever he wants.”

At the 2003 pre-draft camp, six months after James’ 18th birthday, he was measured in bare feet at 6 feet 7 1/4 inches, 245 pounds. He already was carved like a Greek god and capable of playing three or four positions, or just about anywhere he wanted to in the NBA too.

“If he wasn’t born in the United States, I’d say he’s 25 or 26,” Clipper Coach Mike Dunleavy said. “But he’s from the United States; he was born in Cleveland [actually in nearby Akron].

“Even if he had parents with great, unbelievable foresight that the guy is going to be a great, superhuman basketball player, they couldn’t hide him for more than two years. They couldn’t hide him for five. If they said he’s 1 and he’s really 5, I think you might be able to tell. He’s not Baby Huey, you know what I mean?

“The guy’s legit.... He’s incredible. I mean, his size and that speed and everything that goes with, it just seems like it’s almost impossible.”

James is the unquestioned leader of a Cavalier team that has the second-best record in the East. Of course, he was their leader from the moment he showed up, at 18.

Not that he ever imagined it any other way.

“Oh yeah, I feel like my teammates look at me as the leader of this team,” James said. “And, I mean, that’s always what I’ve been to any team I’ve been on and that’s a leader. Yeah, I do, to answer your question....

“I don’t think [it was strange] because I’ve been doing it so long. I’ve been a leader of a bunch of basketball teams. Even at a younger age, my teammates looked for me to make plays and looked for me to lead and to help them. And I’ve been able to do that.”

This is your basic James interview, a matter-of-fact statement of supreme confidence. Little personality leaks out, although James has another persona when no one’s around and that one, at least, acts 21, as when he plays with the fancy toy cars that zoom around the halls of Quicken Loans Arena.

He has a sense of humor too. In a recent game, he complained about being hacked on a shot to referee Steve Javie, who asked how he even got the ball to the rim. Smiling, James flexed one of his big biceps and pointed to it.

The hard part is figuring out whether he’s the Cavaliers’ leader, their ward, or both. At Christmas, when everyone wanted the new Xbox, Drew Gooden joked, “LB [James’ nickname] has got that but he doesn’t play that stuff. He’s 40.”

“He’s wise beyond his age and he understands what it takes to get wins,” said 29-year-old Damon Jones, who was the veteran assigned as James’ counselor in the 2003 rookie transition program, “and that’s all that matters in this game.”

Of course, when you come up the way James did, appearing on the cover of Sports Illustrated as a junior at St. Vincent-St. Mary High School, you grow up fast. His coach, Dru Joyce, who took the team on a national tour, was vibrating like a tuning fork by the middle of James’ senior season, but James loved it.

“Everyone looked at it like it was crazy but I didn’t feel it,” James said. “I didn’t let it bother me. It didn’t bother my teammates. I didn’t let it bother my teammates because they knew it wasn’t just about me and I couldn’t do it without them....

“I’ve never wanted to be isolated from anybody because of my personality. I love being around people. For me to be isolated had never entered my mind.”

He’s being modest. The hubbub was totally about him and he noticed, occasionally yelling, “King James!” after dunks. Sneaker companies flew his mother, Gloria, around the nation. Magazines vied to tell his story. Cable TV networks showed his games and picked up more when they drew big ratings.

The Hummer he drove to school one day was ruled to have been acquired legitimately, by a bank loan to Gloria, but he had to sue the Ohio high school association to finish the season after he was suspended for accepting two retro jerseys. A subsequent suit by a producer who had hoped to do a documentary on James showed the family had gotten $100,000, starting shortly after his sophomore year, which was then repaid.

James handled it the only way one can, retreating into an inner circle that’s still with him, made up of old friends, sometimes called “the Four Horsemen,” including former high school teammate Maverick Carter.

James says things have never died down and it’s still fun. Despite speculation that Nike, which signed him to an unheard-of $80-million deal, would push him to one of the coasts and the Knicks and Lakers holding their breath, he announced he was fine on the coast of Lake Erie and would sign an extension this summer.

There’s no way a young man goes through what he did without changing, but James still looks unfazed and works tirelessly.

Dunleavy said his jump between his first two seasons “was the biggest change I’ve seen almost in any player.” James still has the same incredible feel for the game that wowed NBA scouts from the time they first saw him at 16. His shooting, which improves every season, is now at 50%; he gets his 30 points on a modest 21 shots a game.

“I just hope that one day people will think I was one of the best players to ever play in this league. Ever,” James recently told ESPN magazine. “I know that’ll take titles though. When I think about the best players in the league, I think of the guys who’ve won championships, guys like Tim Duncan, Kobe [Bryant] and Shaq [O’Neal].

“Of all of them, I like Kobe. His knowledge of the game and his killer instinct are what make him so tough. He’s great with the ball and the things he can do offensively are unbelievable. I don’t think I have an instinct like Kobe where I want to kill everybody.”

Of course, Bryant can be seen as a role model in a lot of ways. He lived this dream before James did and it’s never quite what anyone thinks it’ll be.

James is a king, all right. It took high-level negotiations for ESPN magazine to get that interview, which was part of a package promoting Disney’s “Glory Road.” Disney, of course, is no minor player in James’ world, bankrolling the NBA as one of its prime broadcasters.

Nevertheless, the Akron Beacon Journal reported James had been boycotting the magazine since high school, upset by its profile on him. It was like Michael Jordan putting the freeze on Sports Illustrated for its “Bag It Michael” cover when he switched to baseball, after which SI spent years sending emissaries to plead with him to reestablish relations.

It’s not a simple world for your all-time greats. It’s getting more complex all the time, just as this one gets greater.

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Phenoms

Comparing LeBron James’ third-year, per-game averages with those of Kobe Bryant, Tracy McGrady and Kevin Garnett, other high school standouts who went directly to the NBA:

*--* Kobe Bryant Tracy McGrady Kevin Garnett LeBron James MIN 37.9 31.2 39.3 42.0 FG % 46.5 45.1 49.1 50.1 FT % 83.9 70.7 73.8 75.7 3-PT % 26.7 27.7 18.8 33.8 PTS 19.9 15.4 18.5 30.8 REB 5.3 6.3 9.6 6.4 AST 3.8 3.3 4.2 6.4

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Source: NBA.com