Tales of LeBron, before he was King

The first time I saw LeBron James play was in July 2001, at the Adidas ABCD Camp in Teaneck, N.J. Everyone in the Fairleigh Dickinson University gym understood that this kid who had just finished his sophomore year of high school in Akron, Ohio, was the next great thing.

Except his teammates, thrown together for this camp - most of them a year older, all there to impress the big-time college coaches - didn't care. LeBron already had a reputation. They were trying to make one.

The first 10 possessions of his first game, James touched the ball twice, both on rebounds. No passes to him at all. I wish I'd kept the roster to see who was on the team, how they all made out. After the game, LeBron sat with camp director Sonny Vaccaro at the other end of the gym. Vaccaro, nobody's fool ("This kid has a chance to be an icon"), "suggested" to the coach that James be the point guard.

Wonder how Vaccaro would have handled it if he'd known LeBron would ultimately sign with Nike?

Then Scott Raab's Twitter feed is required reading. (Saying I don't tweet is far different from saying I don't acknowledge its importance. Be suspicious of any writer who says he doesn't read X, Y, or Z). Raab has enough bile to fill an arena. The Esquire writer and Cleveland native is writing a book on his obsession, to be titled The Whore of Akron: One Man's Search for the Soul of LeBron James, due out in November.

A typical Raab tweet, posted recently: "I don't root against the #ESPNMiamiHeat as much as I root for every NBA game the #WhoreOfAkron plays to be his last. Big difference."

Separately from the issue of how James left Cleveland, Raab gets to the heart of LeBron's on-court legacy (and then he squeezes tightly). Will James be known as a superstar who also is a great team player or that he has a "reverse-killer instinct," as Raab put it? That legacy certainly can't be determined in this series, and it won't be wholly determined this year. But the clock is ticking.

There may have been more buzz about the first time LeBron ever played in Philly. People were in the aisles at the Palestra when St. Vincent-St. Mary High crushed Strawberry Mansion. Jeremy Treatman, who promoted the event, remembers how the crowd grew restless as the game grew more lopsided.

Strawberry Mansion was scheduled, Treatman said, because there was a chance Mansion star Maureece Rice would break Wilt Chamberlain's city scoring record that night. But Rice got hurt early in the season, so that was out of the equation.

At the start of the fourth quarter, his team up by more than 40 points, "just on his own, LeBron called off all eight [other players], signaled for Maureece to guard him," Treatman said. "They played one-on-one for close to four minutes, six or seven possessions. The coaches had nothing to do with it. The crowd went crazy. I love him for that."

Treatman also remembers a ride on the Broad Street line with James and some teammates, down to have lunch with Andy Reid and meet some Eagles, including Donovan McNabb ("I had to come see the guy who is going to make more money than me," McNabb told him). James said it was only the second time he'd been on a subway.

A teammate asked, what was the first?

"It was in my dream," James said.