Misguided concern

James will be fine, but rest of the circus is cause for worry

Don't worry about LeBron James. He's 6-foot-7 and 225 pounds, and although he's only a 17-year-old senior at St. Vincent-St. Mary High School in Akron, Ohio, he has the sculpted body and the polished game of an NBA veteran. Very soon he will be $20 million richer, give or take a few mil, thanks to a shoe endorsement deal, not to mention the millions he'll get when he becomes the top pick of next June's NBA draft. No, he may never know the collegiate wonders of freshman orientation or frat parties, but LeBron James will be just fine.

Don't worry about LeBron James. Worry about television and how much further down the slippery slope it has traveled now that ESPN2 plans to televise the game between St. Vincent-St. Mary and perennial powerhouse Oak Hill Academy, just to showcase LeBron. If that's not overkill, Time Warner Cable is making some of his games available on pay-per-view in the Cleveland area, as if this high school kid were Lennox Lewis or The Rock. At this rate, it won't be long before some network decides to televise Little League baseball ga ... oh, that's right, they already do.

Don't worry about LeBron James. Worry about a high school that's willing to depend on a teenager as a meal ticket. St. Vincent-St. Mary agreed to allow the pay-per-view telecasts and will reportedly earn between $6,000-$10,000 on the deal. According to some reports, between the television revenues, ticket sales (the school moved its games from the tiny on-campus gym to the 6,000-seat arena at Akron University) and merchandising sales, the school will be about $1.2 million richer by season's end, courtesy of LeBron.

Don't worry about LeBron James. Worry about the hypocrisy that surrounds him. This includes ESPN's college hoops maven, Dick Vitale, who gives teens impassioned speeches about the value of staying in school, yet has agreed to work the ESPN2 game in praise of a kid who is skipping school. Vitale's explanation that he's an employee who's just doing what his bosses tell him doesn't fly. He's powerful enough to beg off this assignment if he really wanted to.

It also includes Sports Illustrated, which recently completed a four-part series that, among other things, lamented the loss of innocence in high school sports, yet fueled the LeBron hype machine by slapping him on the cover of the magazine last February with the headline "The Chosen One."

Don't worry about LeBron James. Worry about all the high school and junior high school players who will never be as good as he is, but don't realize it yet. For every prodigy like James or Kobe Bryant or Kevin Garnett, there are untold others who think they can travel the same high school-to-NBA-stardom path. How many ninth-graders out there are sleepwalking through their studies, unconcerned with GPAs or SATs because they don't think they'll ever have to apply to college? More than we'll ever know.

Don't worry about LeBron James. Worry about the next LeBron, the seventh- or eighth-grader who hits puberty early and makes high schools get dollar signs in their eyes. It's not at all far-fetched to think of middle schoolers being recruited by high schools and looking for extra inducements to enroll, just like the big boys in college. Nor is it a stretch to envision some future LeBron demanding his high school give him a cut of the profits.

By the time that happens, LeBron James will probably be driving a 'Benz, adding a new wing to his mansion and doing all the other things that superstar athletes do. Don't worry about LeBron James. LeBron James will be fine. Worry about the rest of it.

Sports Illustrated senior writer Phil Taylor writes about a Hot Button issue every Monday on CNNSI.com

 

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