OAKLAND, Calif. – LeBron James’ life is in many ways framed by statistics. He accumulates them in big, mountainous piles. Most this, most that. Best this, best that. Not that they’re needed. Anyone with eyes can see he’s one of the greatest athletes in any sport, of any era. The numbers simply confirm what you would have to be blind not to see.
But all those numbers are a small fraction of what makes James special, what hints at the chapter of his life following basketball being even more intriguing than what he’s done while putting together an on-floor resume that rivals the NBA’s most luminescent stars.
The most important number in James’ life, the one he measures himself by, is the number he didn’t become, the odds he overcame.
On the eve of the NBA Finals, with a chance at a fourth ring beckoning and the opportunity to pull himself ever closer to Michael Jordan’s previously believed untouchable standards, James can calm himself with the knowledge that he’s already surpassed odds stacked steeply against kids like him, raised poor and black by a young single mother in a crumbling rust-belt city.
“I don’t really get involved into the whole pressure thing,” he said when he left Miami for Cleveland and was asked about meeting expectations. “I think I’ve exceeded expectations in my life as a professional. I’m a statistic that was supposed to go the other way, growing up in the inner city, having a single-parent household. It was just me and my mother. So everything I’ve done has been a success.”
His is the ultimate success story; a truant being raised by a struggling teenaged mother in Grade 5, moving from apartment to apartment, barely able to survive, a bleak future almost writing itself. But James – with help — was able to right that path and harness his talent and less than 25 years later can speak credibly about owning an NBA team when he’s finished owning the NBA. He’ll be able to buy it with his spare change, most likely.
Few have come farther, faster.
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But in the wee hours of Wednesday morning came a reminder that there is always someone who finds it in their dark heart and twisted mind to hate others for the skin they were born in, that no matter what obstacles overcome, what charitable works done, what trophies raised, in the eyes of some you’re defined as lesser-than, never more.
On the gate of his $21-million mansion in the Brentwood area of Los Angeles, someone scrawled a racist slur, and in a moment James became a different kind of statistic, as one study found that hate crimes are rising rapidly – by more than 20 per-cent — in the United States in wake of the 2016 presidential election.
It is a sobering, depressing reminder with Game 1 of the NBA Finals trilogy featuring James’ Cleveland Cavaliers and the Golden State Warriors slated for Thursday night, that even one of the most powerful athletes on the planet can’t escape the prejudice of some, no matter how few.
“It just goes to show that racism will always be a part of the world, a part of America,” said James. “And, you know, hate in America, especially for African Americans, is living every day. And even though that it’s concealed most of the time, even though people hide their faces and will say things about you and when they see you they smile in your face, it’s a life every single day.”
The front gate of a home belonging to LeBron James is freshly repainted. (Damian Dovarganes/AP)
But James didn’t need someone writing a hateful word on his Los Angeles home – his primary residence is outside his hometown of Akron, south of Cleveland – at first light to remind him of that.
“No matter how much money you have, no matter how famous you are, no matter how many people admire you, being black in America is — it’s tough,” said James. “And we got a long way to go for us as a society and for us as African Americans until we feel equal in America.”
You get the sense this isn’t the first time James has encountered the bile that lies not-so-far beneath the veneer of polite culture. What was remarkable on Wednesday wasn’t the shock that he and his teammates expressed, but how not shocked they were.
“We deal with these types of things on a daily basis,” said the Cavs’ Richard Jefferson. “The things that we’ve seen and had to deal with, a lot of times, they might not even get picked up on.”
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But James has made a career – a life – out of turning expectations and circumstances on their head, of compartmentalizing and forging on. He doesn’t see cause for discouragement when a stranger tries to strike him low from a distance, but opportunity to teach, to educate and maybe even change some minds.
While this incident struck close to home because it quite literally struck his home, he said after first worrying about his family’s safety he thought immediately about Emmett Till, a 14-year-old boy from Chicago who was beaten to death and shot by two white men while visiting family in rural Mississippi in 1955. The perpetrators were acquitted although later admitted to the crime. Till’s mother chose to have the casket open at the funeral to underscore the brutality of the attack and the photographs are credited as one of the catalysts for the Civil Rights Movement.
One of the impacts of James being the victim of a hate crime? Google searches of Till’s name spiked by 1,900 per cent after he mentioned the teen. I was one of them, made wiser because of James’ experience.
“I mean, as I sit here on the eve of one of the greatest sporting events that we have in sports, race and what’s going on comes again and on my behalf and my family’s behalf,” said James. “But I look at it as this. I mean, if this — if this is to shed a light and continue to keep the conversation going on my behalf, then I’m okay with it.”
He was speaking while wearing a Muhammad Ali t-shirt. James has already signed on to produce a documentary on Ali’s life and times. A year ago at Oracle Arena, on the occasion of Ali’s death, James showed that the example of Ali – an athlete who was willing and prepared to sacrifice while being an icon for change – was something that inspired him.
“What he stood for — I mean that’s a guy who basically had to give up a belt and relish everything he had done because of what he believed in and ended up in jail because of his beliefs,” James said back then. ” … It’s also gratifying to know that a guy, one man, would sacrifice so much of his individual life knowing that it would better the next generation of men and women after him.”
James has proven self-aware enough to understand that he’s in many ways a product of the path Ali cut through the tangled bush of prejudice and hate.
And wise enough to know there is so much more ground left to cover.
