Editorial
Front Page - Friday, July 16, 2010
I Swear ...
Are we LeBron?
Vic Fleming
“[W]orking for him for 15 years, [I’ve learned] to think big. … I mean every single conversation. It doesn’t even have to be about basketball. We could be talking about re-doing a kitchen …, and he’ll turn it into … a two-level state of the art something ….”
I challenge you to guess the speaker. And then guess who the speaker was talking about. Yes, the title of this column contains a hint.
If you guessed Dwyane Wade as the speaker and LeBron James as the speakee, you’d be wrong. But you’d be forgiven.
During the days prior to last Thursday, the world bore witness to an ongoing party of sorts, during which LeBron James was wooed and courted by several NBA teams that wanted to make him their own.
LeBron, you see, had completed his contract with the Cleveland Cavaliers, achieving free agency at the age of 25.
Entire cities, it seemed, stayed their usual activities as their pro roundball reps met with King James, as he has been called since being “Mr. Basketball” three years in a row in Ohio’s high school ranks.
ESPN’s talking heads could rap about little else than what the odds were on a given day that LeBron would choose Chicago or Miami or New York.
At the age of 18, as he ended his high school career, LeBron inked a $90 million contract with Nike and was the no. 1 overall draft pick in the NBA, being picked by Cleveland, which was his home.
At the age of 19 he was named Rookie of the Year.
At all subsequent ages he has been on the All-Star squad.
From 2006-2010, he led the Cavaliers into the play-offs, where they lost in the second and third rounds.
James is a heavily tattooed dude. “Chosen 1” is on his back. “Witness” is on one of his legs. His right arm has a lion with a crown and “Gloria” for his mother. His left arm reads “Beast” and “Hold my own,” as well as bearing an image of his first son’s face, “Prince James” for his first son and “Maximus Bryce” for his second.
At various other places, one might see “Akron” and its area code, “330,” “No one can see through what I am except for the one that made me,” “Gifted Child” and a “lion-dragon.”
James is the epitome of humility, as you can tell. James chose the Miami Heat to be his new team. This was announced at a one-hour conference last Thursday on ESPN, complete with three interviewers to ask him tough questions. (“Tough?” Yeah, right!)
This led James and new teammates Dwyane Wade, who has been with the Heat since his rookie season (2003, same as James’) and Chris Bosh, who bolted from the Toronto Raptors after seven seasons (he, too, was a rookie in 2003), to hold a prime time show in Miami at the basketball arena.
There was a stage, a runway, a neon sign reading HEAT in red letters, smoke machines, colored lights and 12,000 rabid fans cheering wildly. The three players were revealed with their backs to the crowd and then dramatically spun around and presented in their Heat uniforms.
They would modestly refer to themselves as “the best trio of basketball players ever on one team” and predict that they would win multiple championships.
I almost forgot. There was Pat Riley, president of the Heat, in the audience.
Riley is the one about whom the remark that started this column was made.
The speaker was 40 year-old Heat coach, Erik Spoelstra, who has been with the organization since 1995 and who succeeded Riley as head coach in 2008.
Vic Fleming is a district court judge in Little Rock, Arkansas, where he also teaches at the William H. Bowen School of Law. Contact him at vicfleming@att.net.
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