"LeBron World Tour" a traveling circus

AS SEEN BY GREEN by Jim Green

By: Jim Green
   I’m sorry. I must have missed something.
   I thought the Prime Time Shootout this month was supposed to be a celebration of the best high school basketball players in the country. I didn’t realize we were actually supposed to be reveling in watching an NBA-quality prep player humiliate other school-age kids on a national stage.
   LeBron James is no more a high school basketball player than Yao Ming. How can you lump someone like Lawrence High School basketball standout Shawn Potocki — a hard-working kid who gets the most out of his abilities; a kid who just wants to find a small college where he can continue playing hoops — into the same group as James, who will sign a multi-million-dollar sneaker contract as soon as his prep days are over?
   The answer is, you can’t. While St. Vincent-St. Mary (Akron, Ohio) has been on the "LeBron World Tour" this season, Lawrence’s longest road trip was to Mount Holly for a Christmas Tournament. Lawrence plays high school basketball, St. Vincent-St. Mary is a traveling show.
   The PTS would have been interesting had Sovereign Bank Arena invited the best public schools from around the country to take on local powers like Trenton and Hamilton. Instead, those who attended got to watch an NBA-caliber 6-foot-8 point guard drop 52 points on kids who will be lucky to play NCAA Division I ball.
   The PTS wasn’t a celebration of high school basketball. It wasn’t even a celebration of prep basketball, which only loosely qualifies as a scholastic sport. It was a celebration of LeBron.
   It was another chance for tons of money to be made off James’ basketball abilities. And it was another opportunity for James’ star to grow.
   No one can convince me that James was a victim of his "ineligibility." All the Ohio High School Athletic Association accomplished with the short-lived suspension was to put James in the national spotlight and prove, once again, that if you’re a good enough athlete, you don’t have to obey the rules.
   Don’t ask me to feel sorry for the "poor high school kid who was taken advantage of." How could James have not known it was wrong to take $800 worth of free merchandise from a Cleveland sporting goods store?
   We live in a society where 13-year-old kids can be convicted of felony crimes and sentenced as adults. Under those conditions, is it so unreasonable to expect a 17-year-old with the world at his fingertips to show restraint for a few months and follow the rules every scholastic athlete is aware of?
   No, it isn’t. And don’t try to tell me James didn’t have proper guidance. If he’s so in need of guidance, he’s not ready to live and work as an adult in the NBA. You can’t have it both ways.
   James knew what he was doing was wrong, but he didn’t care. He knew he was above the rules, so he flaunted them — just as he did when he had his mother buy him the now-infamous $50,000 Hummer.
   Average people don’t receive $50,000 loans because their kids play sports, as James’ mother apparently did. Real high school basketball players don’t have their games televised on cable or appear on the cover of national magazines.
   But James has received all those things. And all we seem to do is give him more. We celebrated this athlete returning from a well-deserved suspension as if he was a military hero returning from the Gulf.
   James fought the law and James won. Do you think the average high school basketball player would have won? Of course not.
   Certainly, few other high school athletes would have been so thoroughly investigated. But James brought that upon himself.
   He has never shunned the spotlight. He has never asked the press to leave him alone and treat him like a normal high school kid.
   He knows what all this publicity is going to get him — more money. And that is what it’s all about. That’s why James was playing in front of thousands of adoring fans at the PTS two weeks ago.
   The so-called "celebration of high school basketball" left the players from Westchester of Los Angeles humiliated by a superior athlete in front of thousands, who couldn’t get enough. And it left the other competing schools — including the hometown Trenton girls basketball team — to pick up the scraps of attention left over.
   The PTS organizers did not even attempt to hide their intentions. All the advertisements for the event centered on James. Only when it appeared for a short time as though James was not going to play did they attempt damage control by convincing would-be customers there were other players worth seeing.
   But the PTS lucked out, as James got his chance to return in front of a national television audience. And when he left the floor with his arms raised in celebration — I wonder if he’ll be so excited the first time he goes 0-for-12 from the field as an NBA rookie — the audience tuned out.
   Don’t worry. Even though James is graduating — one would hope — to the NBA, the PTS already has its next star in line. Lincoln High School (N.Y.) junior Sebastian Telfair already has been mentioned as the next LeBron.
   You can expect Telfair to be the center of attention at the 2004 PTS. Maybe he’ll even get himself suspended beforehand to pump up ticket sales. But I know one high school sports fan who won’t be buying one.
Jim Green is sports editor of The Lawrence Ledger. He can be reached at [email protected].