To be honest it’s crazy seeing Lebron dominate at this age as of now. What was the hype back then like in the early 2000s up until his draft in 03. I was born in 2000 lol. What are some thoughts or stories you guys had back then of Lebron coming up?
To be honest it’s crazy seeing Lebron dominate at this age as of now. What was the hype back then like in the early 2000s up until his draft in 03. I was born in 2000 lol. What are some thoughts or stories you guys had back then of Lebron coming up?
I graduated in HS in 2002. I played basketball with two NBA players.
Even these guys worshiped LeBron.
These are guys if you asked about people like Amare, Bracey Wrights, Bosh, JJ, Shavlik Randolph, Zach Randolph, Marcus Taylor, Julius Hodge, TJ Ford, Eddy Curry, Shannon Brown, JR Giddens, or Charlie V they would say “oh they aren’t that good, I’m better than him”.
I started hearing about “some kid from Cleveland was going to be better than MJ” in 7th Grade. This is completely word of mouth pre-internet. This is when Streets and Smith, Tom Lemming, and Bob Gibbons basketball were the only guys covering HS at a national level. Obviously with the internet every year someone gets hyped.
I was officiating a MS Girls Basketball game 3 weeks ago. The guy working the table is the head Varsity Coach at a smaller HS. Well he is 28, and is a GYM Teacher. Well the site director, the AD, and me are all 37-45. We were talking about random players back in the day. And the Varsity coach was surprised we knew those guys like that. The news was covered differently. Detroit had two major newspapers and each Newspaper had literally 2 prep sports reports. Plus several other people in the newsroom. Every city was like that.
The Top HS players in a sport even in major cities were household names. Because you had NFL on Sunday, College Football.on Saturday. College Basketball was played mainly on Thursday through Sunday back then due.
Literally prep reporters based out of Detroit,Chicago, Louisville, Minnesota, etc were going to LeBron HS games his sophomore and junior year. Thats how he ended up on the cover of SI. By the time he was a Senior the national media was in a frenzy. The only comparable frenzy was Peyton Manning recruitment, Greg Oden was pretty nuts too, Terrelle Pryor, Fournette, Chris Simms, Anthony Munoz Jr, and Adrian Peterson. Meaning their recruitment, was covered at a national level, and their recruitment was making local news or even National News.
LeBron hype made those guys seem like covering a State Championship level game.