YOU want to be cynical. The kid won’t allow it.
You want to be skeptical, hack away at the hype, mock the ridiculous buzz that follows from city to city. He won’t permit that, either.
You want to be logical about this, sensible, you want to say that no player less than a week past his 19th birthday can possibly have this kind of basketball acumen. Those highlights you see on TV? They’re optical illusions, you figure. They have to be. Mind puzzles. Optic riddles. And then you walk up to Paul Silas, a man who’s seen a few basketball players in his time, and you hear him say this:
“LeBron James is the smartest basketball player I’ve ever coached.”
And at some point, you simply have to succumb. You have to understand that everything you heard about LeBron James is true. It’s all accurate. If anything, it’s all been understated and reserved. James isn’t doing this against helpless high-school kids any longer. He isn’t dunking over the student body president anymore, shaking and baking over a defender who is also captain of the debate team.
He’s doing this to the NBA. Night after night after night.
“It’s fun,” James said yesterday, a few hours before he would make his first area appearance as a pro, at the Meadowlands, against the Nets. “I’m having the time of my life, playing a game I love.”
The rest of us, we’re having a pretty good time, wondering how good this is going to get, wondering just how remarkable the imminent journey is going to be. It’s about time we said it for real, and for good: We haven’t seen the likes of LeBron James in more than 40 years. The only other player in the history of professional basketball to have this kind of impact, this soon, this quickly, was Wilt Chamberlain.
Oscar Robertson? Not as a rookie. Julius Erving? Not playing in Virginia, for the Squires, in a place called The Scope and a league called the ABA? Larry Bird and Magic Johnson? Close. But Johnson arrived on a playoff-ready team, alongside a helpful hand named Jabbar; and Bird, well, the Celtics were struggling when he showed up but they were still the Celtics.
Michael Jordan? He’s the closest. But even the awe that Jordan inspired was limited exclusively to the breathtaking individual talents he put on display in that formerly woebegone basketball outpost known as Chicago. He may have had 15 assists in his first three years as a pro.
“That’s what’s so remarkable about this young man,” Silas said. “He’s the kind of guy other players want to play with. And that’s going to be an important factor for us down the road. We’re going to need to upgrade the talent around him, through the draft, through free agency. If you have a guy people don’t want to play with, it’s hard to attract the kind of players you need. That’s never going to be a problem with LeBron.”
By himself, the Cavaliers have been transformed from an identity-free franchise loitering in the league in perfect silence to the sport’s greatest traveling carnival. Maybe James can’t sell out the Meadowlands just yet – the Nets would have trouble selling out if the first 20,000 customers received an Escalade – but he can inspire the folks who do come to wear burgundy-and-gold No. 23 jerseys.
“It’s been over two months now,” Silas, the old pro, said with a laugh, “and it still makes me shake my head, the way people respond to this kid. It’s amazing.”
And it’s earned. That’s the most amazing part of all. He isn’t playing in Trenton anymore, toying with basketball toddlers. He’s in the big room now, playing the big stage, daring you to find something bad to say about his game. Maybe someday that might happen. Just not right now. Not yet. Not for a good long while.