Hype machine

Media's role in the coverage of LeBron James is out of hand

Having written a few weeks ago about how well many of the early-entry, no-college players are doing in the NBA, I might be accused of contradicting myself after offering the following opinion about LeBron James, the most over-chronicled high school student since Prince William. But the issue of whether high schoolers should go directly into the NBA is completely different than whether we in the media should endlessly report on their exploits. Seeing as this debate is most easily defined by the divergent opinions of those nationally known voiceboxes, Dick Vitale and Billy Packer, let me frame my response thusly:

Packer is entirely correct and Vitale is entirely wrong.

ESPN2 should not have broadcast James' game, any more than my magazine, Sports Illustrated, should have put him on the cover earlier this year, any more than we in the media should spend hours breathlessly quizzing NBA players about James' ability.

Vitale, who called the game for The Deuce, should not take this personally, though that is how he tends to take most criticism. (As Vitale once pointed out, my adopted hometown is also Packer's birthplace, but I run into Packer only about once a year, never in town, and we have never so much as shared a dinner or an adult beverage.) Vitale's distinguished broadcast colleague on last week's non-event, Bill Walton, is also wrong, and I consider Walton a friend. I simply have an honest difference of opinion with these two gentlemen.

We live in an era of hype and massive over-coverage of sports. Any reasonable person would agree with that, except possibly Vitale whose entire career is based on propounding overheated, overhyped opinions at eardrum-testing levels. But at what point do we in the media stop acknowledging the existence of hype with a shrug of the shoulders and start doing something about it? To me, one of those stopping points is refusing to celebrate the exploits of a high school player. The logical extension of the coverage given James is that we will soon hear about a 13-year-old junior high player whose talents are so absolutely stupendous that he demands a nationally televised game. Can't you hear Vitale now ...

HERE WE ARE AT PODUNK MIDDLE SCHOOL. THE PODUNK PIRATES, BABY, AND THE BEST BABY BUCCANEER OF THEM ALL, CEDRIC "TOO SWEET" JOHNSON, 13 AND STILL GROWING, BETTER THAN LEBRON JAMES WAS AT THAT AGE! WRAP UP THE HOMEWORK, KIDS AND SIT BACK! THIS IS A BIG ONE AND WE GOT IT RIGHT HERE!

We are not far from that apocalyptic scenario. So-called talent evaluators rate players as young as 10, and the jackals of the sneaker world routinely haunt gymnasiums peopled by preadolescents. The only one word for that is sick.

Walton says that the attention and interest surrounding James simply mandates massive coverage. As a journalist, I can appreciate that viewpoint, except that it happens to be entirely wrong in this case. There is little interest in James beyond what we in the media have scared up ourselves. Sports Illustrated puts him on the cover, so this big-city newspaper must do a feature, so this sports talk show must make him a subject, so this radio broadcast must ... It goes on and on, an endless cycle during which no one stops to ponder if it makes any sense. I don't know of a single person outside of the NBA, James' immediate circle in Akron, Ohio, and the sports journalism world who cares a whit about him, and there certainly wasn't an overwhelming demand to televise one of his games.

Our society's preoccupation with celebrities, real and alleged, advanced beyond absurd a long time ago, and we in the media are almost entirely to blame. A few weeks ago, Diane Sawyer's interview with the overhyped Jennifer Lopez was trumpeted so relentlessly and with such solemnity by ABC that one expected J. Lo to offer a cancer cure. Instead, the climactic moment was her revelation that she was indeed engaged to Ben Affleck, a tidbit that had been leaked days earlier anyway. (In case you're starting to snicker, I did not watch the show; someone told me about it.) There was no great public demand to hear from J. Lo, just as there was no great public demand to see James in action. The demand in both cases came from within the media.

The other argument for televising James' game, and for covering him endlessly, is that he is so good, so positively superior to the rest of his peers, that he warrants massive attention. Michael Jackson as a five-year-old was like that. But this simply doesn't apply to James. I'm not going to overreact and diss his game just to make an argument. He is a terrific player. His moves are fluid, his body is mature, and his hoops IQ seems high. (His shooting touch, of course, is mediocre.) But who knows whether he's the best schoolboy player in the land, much less the best schoolboy player ever? My guess is, he's not even close to the latter.

Though there's no way to prove it, I'd bet that the former Lew Alcindor was better as a 7-foot 17-year-old growing up in New York City. Ditto for Oscar Robertson, a preternaturally gifted all-court player from Indianapolis. I'm almost positive that Moses Malone was better, comparatively speaking, than James. A man among boys, Malone came out of Petersburg (Va.) High School in 1974, skipped college and went right to the ABA, where in his first season for the Utah Stars he averaged 18.8 points and 14.6 rebounds. That wasn't the NBA's Development League, boys and girls -- that was the ABA, a league that included Julius Erving, George Gervin, George McGinnis, Artis Gilmore, Dan Issel, Bobby Jones, Mel Daniels and Ron Boone. Is James that good? Is he going to put up those kind of numbers next year in the NBA? Doubtful. In fact, I'll make this prediction right now: In the 2003-04 season, NBA rookie LeBron James will not be as good as Phoenix Suns rookie Amare Stoudemire, another straight-from-high-school player who is averaging about 11 points and nine rebounds this year.

Walton should ask himself this: Is James even as good, comparatively speaking, as Walton himself was as a 17-year-old Helix High senior in southern California? It's worth a debate. Would Walton have wanted that kind of media scrutiny? Would he have thought it was a good thing?

In short, there was no compelling reason to broadcast James' game outside of the media's own compulsion to find the newest talent and proclaim it the best. The fact that the game was on TV (and that James has been on the cover of SI and everywhere else) is not a matter of dire consequence to the nation at large. But it does protract an unfortunate trend that shows no signs of stopping.

Sports Illustrated senior writer Jack McCallum covers the NBA beat for the magazine and is a regular contributor to CNNSI.com. Click here to send a question to his NBA mailbag.

 

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