The Cube Book Review: Shooting Stars by LeBron James and Buzz Bissinger

I would like to say I go to St. Vincent for the fine academics, but that would not be true. I go there to play basketball with three friends who have become my brothers, Little Dru and Sian and Willie.

From the opening page of the prologue, you know the story of LeBron James and his high school journey is different than yours and mine. Well, you knew that from the moment you decide to read a book written by LeBron James: he’s led a much different life than yours.

But what I took away from LeBron’s coming-of-age story is that, while his high school days were spent pursuing a very real basketball national championship at an age when most of us were still trying to figure out if you should just leave the note in her locker or actually give it to her yourself, is that it’s a story of friendship that the lucky of us are able to share. What I took away is that LeBron shared the experiences of growing up with a tight knit group of friends that would lay down in traffic for him — and he’d do the same for them — and that is something I can most certainly identify with.

King James’ autobiographical coming-of-age book — his true Catcher in the Rye if you will — came out in hardback cover today, and I read it one sitting yesterday on a trip from DC to NYC. James wrote it with acclaimed sports author Buzz Bissinger (a man not unfamiliar with the world of sports blogging — our thoughts here!), and since I got my hands on an advanced copy from the good folks at Press Box Publicity and The Penguin Press, I plowed through it with ease.

So welcome to what we hope can be an expanding feature on the site: The Cubicle GM Book Club.

In my mind, I always find myself identifying and comparing my life with LeBron James’s. It’s a ridiculous notion of course, but he’s only a scant five days older than me, and he’s got a very accessible personality. LeBron truly is the athlete I would say most 24-year-olds try to imagine themselves as. Growing up, the athletes we idolized (MJ mostly) always seemed so heroic and like a god we mortals couldn’t understand. And now that we’re at an adult age, there’s an odd sense of watching the next teen sensation because they’re wildly more athletic than we ever were or will be, and because hell, Melanie Oudin wasn’t even around for the 1980s. But with LeBron, he’s that guy my age that is absolutely dominant in his sport — a singular force that could some day be remembered as one of the greatest — and I’ll always think about how much he and I probably did share so many of the same experiences.

At least, that was my main interest as I sat down to read Shooting Stars: was LeBron James anointed from an early life to live as basketball royalty — or was he just a kid who happened to turn into the defining athlete from the high school class of 2003?

After reading his (and Buzz)’s tale, the answer, of course, is yes.

Yes, LeBron was picked out of the crowd at a very early age and identified as a true star. But yes, he was also just a kid, following a dream, playing sports, fiercely loyal to those he shared some self-defining moments with.

His early life was tough, of course, being the only son of a single mother who had him when she was 16. He moved dozens of times as a kid, his mother searching for stability. And like Michael Oher, another young athlete whose developing life was chronicled (in Michael Lewis’s awesome book Blind Side), it was the care of a stable family who had an interest in youth sports that ultimately gave LeBron enough of a foundation for him to develop as a normal kid, and not a victim to the streets. And once he found that stability, he developed that core group of friends that would shape him and his destiny for the rest of his life.

There are certain aspects of LeBron’s growing-up I absolutely identify with: the private school experience, the obsession with basketball, and above all else, a group of friends that could not be separated. LeBron’s group decided they wanted to become basketball national champions — and so they pursued that dream. From age 13 (in AAU ball) to high school (at St Vincent-St Mary’s), they competed on the national stage every year, but it wasn’t until that final season they accomplished that dream. My group of friends didn’t so much have a collective dream that big (there were about a dozen of us), but we did know we wanted to build up friendships that would last a lifetime. I can say with great pride that dream is still alive — through email and social networking, we’ve been able to stay in touch and we even do an annual trip together every Memorial Day as we all celebrate living in our young 20s together.

The private school aspect of LeBron’s tale was also of interest to me — because of how I experienced a similar thing with the game of basketball. The private school I attended, Charlotte Latin School, was a bit bigger than St Vincent’s, and a bit more devoted to academics than St V’s. While no student who came to our school could ever get away with admitting to coming to CLS specifically for sports, we did have our fair share of public school athletes join the school and help achieve success in ways we probably weren’t going to have with the athletes who came up through K-8th grades. I was one of those kids who came up from the beginning, and by the time I was in high school, there were new kids much better at basketball or baseball who were getting playing time — or in basketball’s case, roster spots — ahead of me. I came to grips with it as I began to find interests beyond actually playing the sports, and hey, we were winning. But I did find it interesting when LeBron would write about the fact that kids who weren’t getting playing time would get upset, and his reaction was, “c’mon, we’re trying to win a national championship.” Now, Charlotte Latin clearly wasn’t on the same scale as St. V’s because we didn’t have LeBron, but we had a future NBA player on the teams while I was there (and an awesome guy, Anthony Morrow), and we didn’t schedule our season any differently just because of Anthony. I would like to think CLS would have done the same if LeBron decided to play there — but then again, CLS’s unwillingness to accommodate a schedule for a guy who admits was trying to prove to Nike and Adidas he could sell out arenas probably means LeBron never would have considered coming to Latin at all.

Which brings me back to a stark reminder: this still was LeBron James. This is the absurd story of a guy so good at basketball at such a young age, he was on a Sports Illustrated cover when we were juniors. I remember reading that article in my bedroom, marveling at how wildly the sports world was seemingly spinning out of control. The fact that LeBron was able to shoulder all that pressure, all those expectations, and come out on top as a mature, wildly successful, NBA MVP at age 24 is a true testament to his mental fortitude. He hasn’t flamed out or let his success become an obstacle on his path to greatness.

My one final thought on this book is about the notion of athletes writing books with major authors: you always go in wondering whose “voice” will win out. And I can say this is definitely LeBron’s book — but being familiar with Buzz’s work, you can see his influence all over it. Buzz is a masterful storyteller, and he clearly lent that expertise to LeBron to enhance what is naturally an extraordinary story. I never felt he dominated the tone of the book, but I can’t deny his presence was felt. Which I suppose is how you’re supposed to feel about a book that claims two authors.

All in all, I enjoyed the three hours it took me to read LeBron’s Shooting Stars. It’s not Twitter-style access to an athlete, but it doesn’t come across as silly self-promotion that, frankly, most athletes’ books are. It’s LeBron, in his-own-and-Buzz’s-guided words, in describing the early life of the King, of the athlete with the potential to define a generation.