AKRON, Ohio – Everywhere you go here, it is about LeBron James.
Everyone you meet wants to talk about him. Everything you hear on the radio is about him. It is all LeBron, all the time.
You think he’s just the latest blessed high school hoops prodigy? You can forget about that. He is 18 years old, and he is the identity of a whole city right now.
“It’s like the boy next door. Everybody’s proud he’s from Akron,” said Gary Cooley, an Akron resident for 44 years. “Everybody knows what’s going on. I’ve had 65-year-old women say to me, ‘What do you think about LeBron?’ “
What they think is that James, a senior at St. Vincent-St. Mary High School (SVSM), is the new American Idol. He is the top-ranked high school player in the country. He will be the top pick in this year’s NBA Draft. He was born on the same date as Tiger Woods (Dec. 30). He wears the same jersey number as Michael Jordan (23). He has his own bobblehead doll.
His court hearing on Wednesday – at which he was cleared to resume his senior season – attracted the most onlookers here since Jeffrey Dahmer’s first murder case.
There never has been another 18-year-old like James. There might not be again.
“I don’t know if there’s really words to describe it,” SVSM athletic director Grant Innocenzi said. “It’s almost like a phenomenon like The Beatles. People go crazy just to see the guy.
“We’ve got letters from kids from Spain, England, all different parts of the world asking for a picture, autograph or anything. It’s not just a national phenomenon. It’s international. People all over the world know who LeBron James is.”
And everyone has an opinion on him, from local cab drivers (“He’s a showboat. I’ve already had enough of LeBron James”) to freshman cheerleaders (“Some people are intimidated by him, but he’s just another kid”) to school administrators (“You can’t downplay it – he’s phenomenal”).
All over town there’s evidence of the hype.
There are giant signs around Akron screaming “Go Fighting Irish!” There are basketball jerseys trumpeted in the school bookstore. There are green and gold balloons to match the basketball court’s green and gold trim.
There are posters and advertisements of him all over the school’s walls. Newspaper clips of James scoring, James flexing, James just being James.
Also hanging on the wall is one particularly interesting sheet of paper. It lists the latest members of the school’s second-quarter honor roll; to make it you have to have a minimum GPA of 3.5.
The 13th name down? You got it.
“He’s a good kid. He’s never had any trouble with breaking any laws,” James’ coach, Dru Joyce II, said. “His friends have been around for a long time. They don’t get caught up in the hype. He’s just LeBron to them, the same kid he’s been forever. They keep him grounded.”
Now, James is on his way to New Jersey. He and his teammates fly into Philadelphia tonight and will play tomorrow against Westchester (Calif.) in the Isles Prime Time Shootout at Trenton’s Sovereign Bank Arena.
Here, there is ecstatic relief he’ll play again, his suspension for accepting two throwback jerseys as gifts reduced to two games.
“There was nobody [at our last game] because of LeBron not being there,” said Matt DeGrand, a SVSM student. “The spirit of basketball was down. Once he got back, there was all this hype. Everybody’s happy again. We’re right behind LeBron on this one.”
“I knew he was going to come back,” Otis Carter, the father of James’ best friend, Maverick, said confidently. “It was the wrong decision. They [OHSAA] passed judgment too fast.”
Is there a downside to all this? Maybe. James is a full-fledged celebrity right now. His science teacher, Jeff Bulgrin, insists James is “a pretty good worker” who “still pays attention and does what he has to do to get the job done.”
At the same time . . .
“He doesn’t get a chance to be treated like a regular person anymore,” Bulgrin said. “He’s still just 18 years old.”
Is he? Somehow in Akron, he seems much more than that.