February 18, 2002 was Lebron James first Sports Illustrated cover. He was 17 years old, a junior at St Vincent St Mary High School in his hometown of Akron Ohio. In a lot of ways, the cover thrust him on the national stage, in the same year that the King James nickname started to spread around Ohio. He considered applying for the NBA Draft as a high school junior, an unprecedented move, though he would not declare, the path that Lebron would take was underway.
Lebron was the youngest person to appear on the cover of Sports Illustrated, and to my knowledge still is the youngest person.
Tiger Woods wasn’t on the cover until the age of 21, and let’s be honest that he’s not been exactly an exemplar of how to handle fame.
So, fast forward to 2010, Boston Celtics vs Cleveland Cavaliers, Lebron scores 15 points on 3 of 4 shooting and the Cleveland Cavaliers, in the Eastern Conference Finals, lose by 32 points. Lebron is accused of quitting, some even say that Delonte West slept with his mom (grounds for an beatdown in every walk of life), and we start to see cracks in the best basketball player on the planet.
July 8, 2010, Lebron announces that he’s taking his talents to South Beach. He, I think , genuinely thought that he was doing something good. He knew there was unprecedented interest in his free agency search and thought that it was a good idea to share his search with the world. He raised $2.5 million for the Boys and Girls Club, but I genuinely think he did not anticipate the backlash.
2011 NBA Finals – after tearing through the first 3 rounds of the playoffs, Lebron completely disappears during Game 4, scoring 8 points and adding 9 rebounds and 7 assists. Many people point to an altercation with Dwyane Wade in Game 3 where Wade seemed to be screaming at Lebron to get it together. He spends much of game 4 playing hot potato with the basketball and standing in the corner of the court on offense.
In Bill Simmons article yesterday, he asks “Who are you, LeBron James? What’s inside you?”
And it occurred to me…he doesn’t know! The benefit of growing up out of the spotlight, not being the biggest star on the planet at a young age, is that you are allowed to grow up and face those difficult moments, those defining self moments, outside of the public eye. The child star never has that opportunity and it seems to always be to their detriment.
I think Lebron is our first professional sports child star. It’s not unprecedented in the movies (Macaulay Caulkin, Drew Barrymore) or in music (Michael Jackson, Britney Spears) for people who are thrust into the limelight as children to experience a breakdown, essentially an identity crisis, during the middle of their career.
Lebron James, the best basketball player on the planet (if you need proof, look at the rest of the 2011 playoffs), is experiencing a similar identity crisis. He’s not huffing markers or showing David Letterman his breasts like Drew, but he has folded to the pressure in consecutive playoff years. He’s got Dwyane Wade, the second best player on his team, screaming in his face. By all appearances, he just shut down in games and the decision was the ill thought out decision of a grown up kid.
Lebron James is 26. Drew Barrymore freaked out at 20. Britney Spears struggled from about age 24 to 27. Michael Jackson…well, he was Michael Jackson, but his issues didn’t really start until around 26. Macaulay Caulkin started freaking out around age 20 and still hasn’t seemed to get it together. Some of these folks who are child stars figured themselves out and some don’t.
The jury is still out on whether Lebron will become the champion that he’s destined to be. But let’s remember, at least for now, he’s just a grown up kid.
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