A beautiful, crisp, sunny day in the Bay gave way to a soft rain that fell over San Francisco on the evening of June 3, 2016, matching the mood inside a hotel ballroom at the Four Seasons on Market Street.
The Cleveland Cavaliers were staying there for the first two games of the NBA Finals, and the previous night, a Thursday, they’d been beaten handily in Game 1 by the Golden State Warriors.
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But the loss on the court wasn’t the reason for the melancholy mood around the table.
Muhammad Ali, the greatest to ever lace up boxing gloves, died that day. As clouds hovered over the bridges and a steady mist surrounded the street lamps along Market, every TV in every bar, restaurant and, yes, the Cavs’ team room at the Four Seasons was tuned to the wall-to-wall coverage of Ali’s passing.
A number of Cavs personnel, including Channing Frye, Richard Jefferson, Kevin Love, J.R. Smith and LeBron James, were seated together, engaging in a familiar activity from that season: sipping a vintage red.
“We’re sitting there with the Nike folks, our regular crew, having a glass of wine, and we had been there an hour or two — so, it’s like a couple of glasses,” Frye said. “Somebody whispered something in (James’) ear, and he was like, ‘All right, y’all, see you,’ goes up, changes his clothes and goes and works out for like two hours.”
On a Friday night? With practice scheduled for the next day and Game 2 of the finals on Sunday? After several glasses of wine?
“I was like, ‘What the (expletive) is wrong with this dude?’” Frye said. “And they were like, ‘Muhammad Ali had such an influence on him.’
“To me, that’s what changed his attitude about the sense of urgency of what was happening at that moment,” Frye said.
What was happening during those 17 days in June, seven years ago, was James was preparing to lead the greatest comeback in NBA Finals history, which, for this discussion, is almost beside the point.
James has been on the scene 20 years now, a 20-year reign for a kid from Akron with the nickname “King,” and, after everything that’s happened over these last two decades, can we even still agree on what stands as his seminal moment?
If I say it was then — the 2016 finals — when he steered the Cavs from a 3-1 deficit to beat the Warriors in Game 7, winning the first title in franchise history and first for the city of Cleveland since 1964, might you mention Feb. 7, 2023, when he passed Kareem Abdul-Jabbar to become the NBA’s all-time leading scorer?
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If I say he entered the league as an 18-year-old living in a small apartment on a hill in Akron, raised by a single mother who sent him to live for a time with a more affluent family while she got her own life together, with more hype than any rookie before him or since, and with the hopes of an entire region riding on this prodigal son to erase a decades-long curse of losing, and he somehow exceeded those expectations …
Might you counter with, well, he built and opened and maintains a public school for Akron children at risk of not graduating?
If I throw out those two titles with the Miami Heat, and how they came to be through “The Decision,” and how his matriculating from Cleveland to South Beach changed the NBA forever, would you offer those 100-plus days in something called “The Bubble,” behind the gates of Disney World, in the midst of a pandemic and social unrest, when he drove the Lakers to a title?
We could play this game all day. The Athletic is going to play it for multiple episodes.
“A King’s Reign,” a podcast series reported, narrated, produced and edited by The Athletic, with insights from the people who grew up with, lockered next to, campaigned with, toasted victory and cried in defeat with arguably the greatest basketball player of all time.
We sought to collect as many stories as possible just like the one Frye told — private, raw, a moment you can’t just find on YouTube or Netflix. Pieced together, they paint with broad brush strokes and fine detail a picture of the complex and beautiful story of LeBron Raymone James Sr.
The series begins today with the introductory episode. It details his humble upbringing in Akron and his never-before-seen stardom in high school, up through the hopes of a franchise pinned on the mere possibility of being able to draft him out of its own backyard.
In today’s episode, you’ll hear:
- “He can make a left-hand layup,” at age 9, and, “He made it look easy, and that he was saying that this is his first time playing organized basketball,” said Willie McGee, a childhood friend to LeBron.
- “We would not have gotten that (ping-pong) ball” if the Cavs didn’t win the last game of the 2002-03 season, and “Austin Carr was in tears … a lot of the management and front office had had parties that night … It was just remarkable,” said Gordon Gund, former Cavs majority owner, on the night Cleveland won the lottery to be able to draft LeBron.
In Episode 2 on July 18, we’ll have a retelling of the day he altered the balance of power in the NBA’s Eastern Conference in one game and the prominent role he played in restoring USA Basketball to its expected perch as the pre-eminent superpower in international basketball.
- “I remember that night saying, ‘Man, it might be over for us (the Pistons),’” and, “I really do believe that that was the night that LeBron proved to himself that he could be the best player in the world,” said Chauncey Billups, about the night LeBron scored 25 consecutive points and 29 out of 30 to beat the Pistons in pivotal Game 5 of the 2007 Eastern Conference finals.
- “It happened in 2006 when we were in Japan, when the guys were kind of talking among themselves … in like the dining room. … Coach K (Mike Krzyzewski) and I were aware these guys were talking about stuff like that, about teaming up and playing together,” said Jerry Colangelo, former managing director of Team USA about witnessing LeBron, Chris Bosh and Dwyane Wade discuss joining forces in the NBA while playing for the national team.
You’ll hear so much more through July 28.
Still to come is a deep dive into James leaving the Cavs for the Heat, his historic four years in Miami and his stunning return to Cleveland and, of course, the 2016 title run.
We take a long look at LeBron, the global business man; LeBron, the social activist; LeBron, the actor; and LeBron, the face of the league. There was his signature achievement as a member of the history-rich Lakers, leading them to the championship in 2020 and his rivalry-turned-friendship with Stephen Curry.
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Krzyzewski, Erik Spoelstra, Mike Brown and Jason Kidd sat with The Athletic for this project, as did Hollywood director Judd Apatow and actor Bill Hader, who worked with James on the movie “Trainwreck.”
There are trips down a highway of memories (Interstate 77, which runs south through Cleveland and Akron), with people like Tom Withers of The Associated Press, who began covering James when he was a freshman in high school, and Michele Campbell, the executive director for The LeBron James Family Foundation responsible for building the I Promise school.
Among contributors to the project from The Athletic, Jason Lloyd and I were beat writers covering the Cavs for James’ entire second stint in Cleveland. Jason wrote a book on his return to Cleveland called, “The Blueprint.”
When Cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer hired me in 2014, it was specifically to cover James — and not the Cavs at-large. I was one of the few reporters in American history hired to cover a single professional athlete in a team sport. “LeBron” was my beat for two years: his basketball playing, his politics, his charity, his expansive business deals and his star power.
David Aldridge is in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. He covered Michael Jordan and LeBron and can make the comparison. Sam Amick has covered seven of the 10 NBA Finals involving LeBron, dating to 2013.
These are just some of the people who helped make “A King’s Reign” a reality.
As you engage with our project, you’ll find there isn’t any single way to sum up a career as diverse as LeBron’s. He has the hardware (four titles with three teams, only player to win finals MVP with three different teams), the finals berths (eight in a row from 2011-18), the regular-season MVPs (four), the stats and the highlights.
He showed the NBA players’ union how to wrestle power from owners.
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He proved he is a pass-first player who happened to become the league’s all-time leading scorer.
He is the modern-day model of the athlete-as-activist, a business mogul and media maven.
“Ninety-nine point nine percent of the NBA plays basketball to win a game, win an MVP, maybe win a playoff series. If you have a chance, win a chip — one,” Frye said. “He’s playing every single game to be the greatest player ever.”
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(Top illustration by Natalia Agatte / The Athletic)
