Life might get rough for the next few months. You wonder how he will cope. The Hummer won’t get the usual choice parking space, next to the spots reserved for the handicapped. The limos no longer will line up outside his hotel. The fans won’t clap, bands won’t play, games won’t sell and, what’s worse, Dick Vitale won’t slobber.
Basketball is gone. All that’s left is books. From now until basketball season ends, LeBron James will be just like any other high school kid. How traumatizing.
Before we contemplate what’s next for James, let’s examine why 20,000 people holding tickets to his next game are cursing today. The guardians of high school sports in the state of Ohio took away James’ eligibility because he had the nerve to take a pair of freebies.
Evidently, there’s a rule that Ohio high school players can’t accept gifts of any value. Can you imagine state investigators peeping around corners to make sure Bob the wrestler in Youngstown and soccer-playing Molly in Toledo aren’t slurping complimentary ice cream sundaes at the corner deli? Right. It’s so silly, because it’s impossible to fairly police 500,000 ballplaying boys and girls. That is, unless their highlights are on ESPN, which reduces the number of potential suspects to one.
Besides, nabbing an 18-year-old who drives a $50,000 SUV for having $845 worth of jerseys is like arresting Al Capone on outstanding parking tickets.
James was robbed of a chance to take his No. 1-ranked team to the state tournament because state officials were turned off by his considerable excesses, not because he committed a crime. End of story.
But don’t cry for James. In a strange, if inexcusable way, the state did him a favor. It gave him something he hasn’t had in a long time, and probably won’t see again. It gave him normalcy.
From the time Sports Illustrated plastered him on the magazine cover when he was just a high school junior, life went out of whack. He grew a posse before he grew facial hair. He started calling himself King James, and what’s even more disturbing, adults began calling him that too.
When he fractured his wrist last summer, he went to see Michael Jordan’s doctor, who doesn’t exactly live in James’ hometown of Akron. He had his own bobblehead. He had Shaq’s cell phone number. And as of Friday night, 574 LeBron James items were selling on eBay.
As LeBronmania began to swell along with the kid’s head, I resisted any urge to condemn a whirlwind that showed signs of getting far out of control. Plenty of others were screaming how the sky was falling.
But here’s the problem with anyone getting bent out of shape about James: There have been hundreds, if not thousands, of James in our society. Fifty years ago, Liz Taylor was a major Hollywood star before she could legally drive. Tom Cruise was barely out of his teens when he fell into some Risky Business.
And forget about James’ Hummer; can you imagine what’s parked in Britney Spears’ garage? Speaking of garages, once he developed a certain software while working in his dad’s garage, young Bill Gates dropped out of college. For some blessed and talented people, the value of a college or even high school education isn’t all that important.
What will be refreshing, especially for James, is this brief and final pause between one grand stage and the next. He might not think so now, but being a normal kid until the NBA draft in June could be an invaluable experience. The media will mostly leave him alone. He won’t have to be everything to everybody. He’ll know what it feels like to be grounded, and gain a greater appreciation for the fame and fortune that’s speeding his way.
Since he can’t wear a uniform for several months, he can go back to being a teenager. James can attend basketball games instead of playing in them. He can drive his Hummer and the state of Ohio won’t even care. Being normal does have its benefits.
