{"id":795291,"date":"2024-01-29T15:03:30","date_gmt":"2024-01-29T20:03:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/?p=795291"},"modified":"2024-01-29T15:03:32","modified_gmt":"2024-01-29T20:03:32","slug":"lebron-james","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/the-magazine\/30-players-who-defined-slam\/lebron-james\/","title":{"rendered":"THE 30 PLAYERS WHO DEFINED SLAM’S 30 YEARS: LeBron James"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

For three decades we’ve covered many amazing basketball characters, but some stand above the rest\u2014not only because of their on-court skills (though those are always relevant), but because of how they influenced and continue to influence basketball culture, and thus influenced SLAM. Meanwhile, SLAM has also changed those players’ lives in various ways, as we’ve documented their careers with classic covers, legendary photos, amazing stories, compelling videos and more. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We compiled a group of individuals (programming note: 30 entries, not 30 people total) who mean something special to SLAM and to our audience. Read the full list here<\/a><\/strong> and order your copy of SLAM 248, where this list was originally published, here.<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/em><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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This was early 2002, a cold winter day in snow-covered Trenton, NJ, in an arena then named for a bank and since renamed for an insurance company, as these things are. Among the more than 8,000 people packed into the building were hundreds of media members; among them was a now-famous NBA reporter, best known for his hashtag social media bombs, then working as a columnist at a midsized newspaper where, a few years earlier, we (briefly) had been colleagues. Like the rest of the media pack, we were there to watch a high school basketball game, but really, we were there to watch one particular high school basketball player.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chatting pregame near our baseline seats, two or three rows back from the court, he said something about that player that at the time I disagreed with, and that I\u2019ve also never forgotten: \u201cThis kid\u2019s like the perfect SLAM magazine guy.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I disagreed because, well, we already had a few perfect guys. We had Michael Jordan, not far away from his final retirement but still the foundation without which this magazine could not exist. We had Kobe Bryant, a soon-to-be three-time defending NBA champion and Jordan\u2019s polarizing heir apparent. And we had Allen Iverson, the purest representation of an ongoing cultural moment that this magazine has documented like no one else. But\u2026this kid? Generationally special, no doubt. It just seemed a bit early to think of him on quite that level.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Six months later, around the time we gave LeBron James his third full-length feature\u2014not including the year of high school diaries he\u2019d penned for us\u2014and his second cover, all (still) before he\u2019d stepped onto an NBA court, I no longer disagreed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We did not, for the record, see all this coming. Not all of it, anyway. Not the 21 seasons and 21 All-Star nods, not the four championships and four MVPs, sure as hell not the all-time NBA scoring record. But we were very confident he\u2019d be very good, which is why we gave him feature-length coverage before pretty much anyone outside his hometown had heard of him. And the 27 covers and two special issues in the two decades since would seem to confirm that yes, LeBron James\u2014a fixture in these pages for 23 of our 30 years of existence\u2014is probably the single most iconic player of the SLAM era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He\u2019ll always be remembered most for his NBA superlatives, the unprecedented statistical output and, of course, those rings. That\u2019s the lead on his Wikipedia page and the inscription on his Hall of Fame plaque. But the story\u2014his story, and the nexus of his story with ours\u2014is so much more than that. LeBron\u2019s story was a movie (not to mention a couple of books) before he ever got to Draft night. That\u2019s the story we told before anyone else, the one that left us uniquely suited to tell the rest. Maybe the only thing more incredible than how it started is that somehow, it still shows no signs of coming to an end.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We\u2019ve told this one before, but for the sake of setting the scene, it bears repeating. Spring 2001, near the end of his sophomore year, we took a flight from New York City to Akron, OH, to spend a day with LeBron James. When we arrived at St. Vincent-St. Mary High School, there was a small sign out front bearing the words \u201cWELCOME SLAM MAGAZINE.\u201d Within a year or so, it would be replaced with a sign on the door announcing that media were barred from campus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But that was later. Back in \u201901, the folks at St. V were excited that someone from a national magazine was coming to their tiny high school to write a story about one of their own. They knew LeBron was good, of course\u2014by that point he was a two-time state champ and pretty clearly the best player in Ohio. But SLAM showing up was different. This meant LeBron wasn\u2019t just good. He was about to be famous, too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

LeBron made his mag debut with that feature-length profile that summer, followed immediately by a year-long run as our Basketball Diary writer\u2014the first non-senior to hold that spot. (They might not put that on the HOF plaque, but for both of us, it was history of a sort.) From the beginning, LeBron was telling his story in our pages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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It took a while, but eventually the rest of our sports media peers started catching up. The Sports Illustrated<\/em> cover came late in his junior year, back when SI<\/em> was elite and its cover choices could drive the narrative. Steady coverage on SportsCenter,<\/em> then the place to catch the most important sports news and highlights, followed soon after. By the end of his junior year, Bron\u2019s story was national.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By the middle of his senior year, when St. V was playing a national schedule and LeBron\u2019s highlights were going pre-Twitter viral, it was an unprecedented circus. Ohio\u2019s high school governing body didn\u2019t know how to handle it, investigating the 18-year-old senior\u2014who would be worth more than $100 million by his next birthday\u2014for driving a Hummer gifted to him by his mother, then suspending him for taking a couple of throwback jerseys from a local shop. His first game back from that suspension\u2014initially meant to cost him the remainder of his senior year before a legal challenge shortened it to two games\u2014came on that cold night in Trenton. He scored 52 in a rout, capping the silliest week of the most ridiculous season in his legendary high school career with the loudest possible statement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Months later\u2014fresh off a second SLAM cover, on which he rocked our logo on a headband (his idea, we didn\u2019t ask)\u2014he was Nike\u2019s $90 million man and the No. 1 pick in the 2003 Draft. Like we said, it was a movie before he ever set foot in the League, an action-packed drama in which the leading man over-came humble beginnings, surmounted every obstacle, and won in the end. And somehow, it was only the start.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s gotten difficult at this point to talk about LeBron\u2019s NBA career without focusing on the numbers. The various totals and career averages are almost overwhelming. We\u2019re talking about a dude who put up nearly identical averages\u2014around 30 points, 8 rebounds and 7 assists per\u2014at age 37 as he did at 23. We\u2019re talking about a dude who set the all-time NBA scoring record last year, and who\u2019s on pace to blow by 40K by season\u2019s end. He\u2019s 39 now, and even as he\u2019s shown some signs of time finally catching up, he\u2019s still putting up 25, 7 and 7 a night\u2014numbers just shy of the average output for his entire career.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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But if you\u2019ve been there as long as we have, the numbers, staggering as they are, remain secondary to the story. He put together arguably the greatest\u2014and undeniably the most high-profile\u2014high school career of all time. He came into the League with unequaled hype, and based on his individual play, lived up to it almost immediately. Championships proved more elusive in the NBA than they had in high school (where he won three), and the fact that he couldn\u2019t carry otherwise mediocre rosters to a title during his first seven seasons in Cleveland led to a narrative that LeBron lacked a killer instinct. It was here that he paled when compared to Mike and Kobe, until he kicked off the Super Team era; with Dwyane Wade as his runningmate and a supporting cast more in line with the groups Mike and Kobe ran with, he finally copped his first two rings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eventually he came home(ish) to Cleveland, and with Kyrie and Kev took out the 73-win Dubs for ring number three. Then, perhaps inevitably, it was on to L.A., a more logical home base for both his growing media and business empire and his growing family. This time, Anthony Davis played the elite sidekick as LeBron claimed a fourth chip.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But again, the story\u2014the how of everything he\u2019s done, even more than the what\u2014is what compels us. How he reinvented the idea of player empowerment, determining the steps in his career path in a way no star ever had. How he built on the Jordan and Shaq endorsement model to become not just the face of but a stakeholder in businesses ranging from European soccer to fashion to Hollywood, where he\u2019s a powerhouse behind the scenes and a half-decent actor on them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And most importantly: how this son of a single mother, a kid who never knew his dad, has embraced his role of husband and father, actively supporting his own family in a way that balances their public life with an entirely authentic devotion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So here is LeBron, pushing 40, the game\u2019s elder statesman, an icon across sports and culture, an actual self-made billionaire, a man whose influence on the game\u2014both on and off the court\u2014might not be fully measured for years to come. He may or may not be your GOAT, but that hardly matters. He\u2019s never been perfect, but he\u2019s been the perfect guy for this magazine and everything we love about the game. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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FULL LIST<\/strong><\/a><\/div>\n\n\n\n
COP THE MAG<\/strong><\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Photo via Getty Images. Portrait by Atiba Jefferson<\/em>. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For three decades we’ve covered many amazing basketball characters, but some stand above the rest\u2014not only because of their on-court skills (though those are always relevant), but because of how they influenced and continue to influence basketball culture, and thus influenced SLAM. Meanwhile, SLAM has also changed those players’ lives in various ways, as we’ve […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":796151,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[65150],"tags":[62525,13004,65151],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-795291","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-30-players-who-defined-slam","tag-feature-1","tag-lebron-james","tag-slam-30-years"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/795291","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=795291"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/795291\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":796155,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/795291\/revisions\/796155"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/796151"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=795291"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=795291"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=795291"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=795291"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}