Role models

LeBron should take a lesson from three of the NBA's best

A few minutes before his Detroit Pistons met (and eventually lost to) the Orlando Magic in Game 1 of the Eastern Conference playoffs last Sunday, general manager Joe Dumars sat in an office near his team's locker room and pondered the ramifications of having a certain royal visitor grace the Palace that afternoon. "With a kid who hasn't yet declared for the NBA draft," Dumars said to John Hammonds, his vice president of basketball operations, "what's allowed and what's not allowed? I mean, are you violating something if you run into him? Can you talk to him?"

"It's pretty simple," said Hammond. "You just can't work him out, that's all."

Dumars, one of my all-time favorite players when he was a steady scorer and a bull terrier of a defender with the Bad Boy Pistons of the mid-80s to mid-90s, is hardly the kind of man who would charge down to give a shout-out to a high school kid, even one who has achieved a precocious immortality. But, see, when LeBron is in the house, the house is all about LeBron.

I had my first meeting with teenaged icon LeBron James after Sunday's game. He was in Detroit with the rest of the James Gang, a posse of three or four seemingly nice young men. LeBron had already chatted up a number of players and had just finished exchanging high fives with Orlando's Drew Gooden when I asked him, "What's with your jersey?" James had on a Chicago Bulls No. 0 jersey with (to me) an inscrutable "WWES" on the back.

"What do you mean?" he said.

"The name. Is it some kind of reference to Wes Unseld?" (Several months ago James had gotten in trouble with the Ohio High School Athletic Association for wearing a retro Unseld jersey that had been given to him by a store in Cleveland.)

"No, man, it's a Bulls jersey," he said with a smile.

"I can see that. I mean the back. What's WWES mean?"

James chuckled. His posse chuckled. I chuckled. We all chuckled. But I still didn't know what it meant.

"It's a player," he said.

"What player?" I asked.

James chuckled. His posse chuckled. I chuckled. We all chuckled.

"Before your time," he said, slapping me on the back.

My investigative ardor gone, I walked away, gently put in my place (I think) by a teenager.

It's LeBron's world right now -- we're all just living in it. Over the past year he has become an A-list celebrity, preternaturally comfortable in the spotlight, as spit-shined as any runway model, as polished as any four-term politician. I mean, any high school kid who remembers to give a shout-out to both his mother and the troops overseas during a TV interview has traveled way beyond savvy.

I'm not here to be the voice of doom, but I will say this to LeBron: You have a few more months of being on top of the world. Then it gets real. This occurred to me when Tracy McGrady, one of James' millionaire mentors, talked about the advice he provides in his occasional phone calls with the likely (make that certain) No. 1 pick in the upcoming NBA draft.

"I tell him it's different up here," said McGrady, who came straight out of high school to the Toronto Raptors as the ninth pick in the 1997 draft. "There are all kinds of adjustments. You may find yourself at the end of the bench from time to time. It's not like high school. It's not always easy."

We have hyped this kid up to the point where if he comes in as a rookie and doesn't finish in, say, the top 10 or 15 in points, rebounds and assists, he'll be labeled a failure. James would do well to heed McGrady's words and to study the careers of two other comparable straight-out-of-high-school predecessors, both of whom are still active in this year's NBA playoffs.

Mentor McGrady averaged just seven points a game in his rookie year, just 9.3 in his second. He was frustrated and felt cold (he was in Toronto, after all) and alone in the shadow of his better-known cousin, Vince Carter. The Raptors' coach at the time, Darrell Walker, ripped McGrady's work ethic and told him he'd never be an NBA player.

Kobe Bryant also had a single-digit rookie year, averaging only 7.6 points, 1.9 rebounds and 1.3 assists for the Lakers. He was routinely described as aloof and selfish -- wait a minute, that was only months ago -- and generally disruptive to team harmony. Remember, LeBron, Kobe didn't come into the league and start getting measured for rings; he played three frustrating seasons before he got one. (And he's one of the lucky few to win a title.)

Then there's Kevin Garnett. He put up good (though not sensational) rookie numbers in 1995-96 (10.4 points, 6.3 rebounds) and got better every year. But even as he kept improving and turned himself into one of the league's outstanding all-around players -- he got my MVP vote this season -- his career became increasingly defined by what he didn't do rather than by what he did. He didn't lift his team beyond the first round. He didn't turn it into a contender. He didn't make his teammates better. He didn't. He didn't. He didn't.

Yes, Bryant is at the top of his world as he goes for four straight titles, but it wasn't always like that. And both Garnett and McGrady deal daily with the burden of excessive expectations. All they want is the championship that would provide the ultimate validation -- but both know that with their respective teams, it's not imminent. Still, they keep on going, playing hard, improving. What LeBron needs to pick up from these three players is not how McGrady is able to finish with either hand, or how Bryant expertly changes pace to find space in the open floor or how Garnett manages to be both a perimeter threat and a devastating rebounder. LeBron needs to study their professionalism, the way they handle themselves, the way they've dealt with frustration. I'm sure WWES would tell him the same thing.

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

 

Related information

Stories

SI Flashback: Ahead of His Class LeBron James Timeline Previous Jack McCallum Columns

Multimedia

Visit Video Plus for the latest audio and video