by Lebron James
“This is all about your son.”
“I’m just being real. You saw how Dru played. You saw how your son played. Say what you want, but your son’s a year away.”
The anger only festered when his son was placed on the JV. The father stood at practice with a perpetual scowl on his face; following one JV game he tried to attack coach Bob Dezso and Coach Dru had to come between them. Part of the issue was playing time, but the father could not reconcile how his son, despite being taller and stronger than Little Dru, was not nearly as skilled. Coach Dru knew how people laughed freshman year when his son warmed up for games, then were shocked when he actually played, followed by the chants of “midget” and “smurf” and “mascot.” Coach Dru just knew that until Little Dru proved himself once and for all, the whispers and the chants wouldn’t stop. They probably wouldn’t stop anyway. So Coach Dru simply wouldn’t accept the mistakes from his son that he would from others.
If Little Dru turned the ball over, it was ten times worse than anyone else turning it over. If he took a poor shot, it was “a terrible shot, how could you do that?” If he fouled, it was a dumb foul. Everything was magnified in Little Dru’s case. Coach Dru had decided early on that no one—no one who knew basketball at least—would say that his son got where he was because of being a daddy’s boy: “You see it happening all the time with a lot of dads who coach the team, that their son can do no wrong and they just let their son do whatever they want to, but I wasn’t going to do that,” was the way he later put it.
I would not know anything about fathers bonding with sons in sports because I never had a father growing up. Without being a psychologist, I also know that fathers and sons don’t always mix on the court the way they think they will. It is a complex relationship when the father, maybe without quite knowing it, turns himself into a twenty-four/seven coach, and the son, without knowing it, becomes a twenty-four/seven player. I saw that happen to them over the years, even as they both got so much better at what they did. Little Dru was still a demon on the court. He got into more fights than anyone in practice. He fought Sian and Willie and me, and it did not matter if we got the best of him: we understood that he was going to fight back. Clearly he was learning his father’s lessons: he could not back down under any circumstances.
After practice was the worst. They rode home together at seven thirty or eight, Little Dru enduring the inevitable rite of a father critiquing every single facet of everything his son had just done, like picking at a scab until it bled. Little Dru only added to the bloodshed with his instinct to question authority.
I would often get a lift home with them. People say I have always had great vision on the basketball court, but I think I had my greatest vision in the back seat of Coach Dru’s car. I knew exactly what to do at all times, which was to keep very, very quiet. I like to think I’m a peacemaker and can settle people down. Sports does make tempers flare, and I often crack jokes during practices to keep everybody loose. I knew that trying to settle them down, getting them to see each other’s perspective, was fruitless. Practice had been hard enough with Dambrot’s screaming. For Little Dru, those car rides back home continued the tirade in what seemed like an endless stream, only of what he had done wrong, rarely what he had done right: “You can’t accept that you got beat on that play. You can’t accept that. It’s not acceptable. It can’t happen. . . . If it’s LeBron and you are going one-on-one with him on a fast break, you’ve got to strip the ball, you’ve got to do something: Okay, I got scored on, next play. That doesn’t work. . . . Everybody is looking and waiting for the opportunity for you to make a mistake.”
Which only made Little Dru tell his father, “I’m tired of listening to it.” One of the best days of Little Dru’s life was when he got his own driver’s license and didn’t have to catch a ride home with his dad anymore. Come to think of it, it was one of the best of my life as well.
The bond between them was still powerful. There had been all those days of Little Dru tagging along when his father had played pickup ball at Elizabeth Park. There had been all those days at the house on Greenwood Avenue with Coach Dru rebounding for his son and teaching him. Coach Dru understood that this was his son. But he felt there were times Little Dru needed tough love if he was ever going to realize his dream of playing Division I basketball. Nor was it a matter of Coach Dru’s ego trying to overshadow his son. He could care less about his own ego. That isn’t why, in the early days of the Shooting Stars, he drove us all over the Akron and Cleveland metropolitan areas just to find us a place to practice. So while it got tense at times, very tense, Coach Dru wanted the best for Little Dru, the very best. Of all the words of advice Little Dru heard from coaches over the years, these from his dad resonated the most: “It is discipline, not desire, that determines your destiny.” To Little Dru, those words meant that there is no substitute for preparation. They also meant that when the opportunity arose, wherever it came from, he would be ready to seize it.
II.
We shredded our local schedule that freshman season and coasted into the play-offs in March 2000. But Dambrot had something far more important to grapple with—his mother, Faye, was dying of lung cancer at the age of sixty-six. He began to split his time between the Cleveland Clinic, a hospice in Akron, his full-time job as a stockbroker, then practice. He was exhausted and in terrible grief. To this day, I still don’t know how he juggled everything back then. He didn’t either, and it would have been understandable if he had just decided to stop coaching for the duration of the play-offs. It was his mother who insisted he forge on; she told him he owed it to the kids who played under him, both black and white.
She died just before the state tournament final four, and the team did forge on. We met her before she died, and she was deep in all our hearts and memories. She was a great champion of equality, and for four black kids trying to make it in what was basically an all-white environment, you have no idea how important that was to us, how much it helped us. We played on in her honor.
St. V won the semifinal 63-53 over Canal Winchester, thanks to a 26-point performance by Maverick Carter. It gave us a record of 26-0 and a place in the Division III state championship against Jamestown’s Greeneview High School before 13,061 fans at the Value City Arena at Ohio State University in Columbus. I was six-four and 170 pounds at the time, still a little bit gangly, still far away from the six-eight and 260 I would be by the time God was through and said, That’s the best I can give, the rest is up to you.
I scored 25 points, but my performance was far from the most impressive one that day. None of us had ever seen anything like what we witnessed; Coach Dambrot said it was perhaps more amazing than anything else he’d ever seen in his coaching career. All I can say about it is this: Coach Dambrot was right. It was beautiful, the most beautiful thing I have ever seen on a basketball court.
THERE WAS NO INKLING of what would happen that day. If there was karma, it was hiding somewhere. Little Dru didn’t go to sleep the night before and have some epic dream of how it would all end up. He didn’t wake up that morning thinking something special and life-altering was going to happen. That season, he’d gotten about 10 to 11 minutes of playing time a game, his first taste with about 3 to 4 minutes left before the end of the first quarter; since he was small, Dambrot tried to eliminate pressure situations for him and get him open shots. There was no reason to think the routine was going to be any different in the state championship.
The game was in the afternoon, so the team was up by 9:00 a.m. We had breakfast, and because our hotel did not have a full-sized gym, we did our walk-through in the parking lot, going over how we would attack Greeneview’s zone defense. We got to the Value City Arena about two hours before game time, which gave us plenty of time to warm up. Little Dru donned his uniform with the number 10 on it, and I put on mine with the number 32 and the “Fighting Irish” insignia across the front.
We weren’t nervous as much as we were excited, filled with anticipation, ready
to accomplish something that St. V hadn’t done since 1984, win a state championship. Coach Dambrot was nervous. You could see it in his face as he collected the rubber bands that we liked wearing around our ankles and wrists but weren’t allowed to have on during games. He shoved them into his pocket; as the game began he reached inside and fingered them as he paced up and down the sidelines.
Little Dru sat as close to the coaches as possible. He had learned that from his dad: when a coach puts in a substitution, make him see your face first. We weren’t playing well at the start. We had no juice. Coach Dambrot almost threw Little Dru to the scorers’ table and said, “Go in there and get those guys.”
He was greeted by the usual smirks when he appeared on the court. The program listed him at five-two and 110 pounds, but everybody knew that was a hyped-up lie. He couldn’t lift a weight to save his life; when he tried to, the weight just lifted him like Popeye before he eats his spinach. Because his shorts drooped below his knees (he said he liked the look), there was always a chance he might trip. Personally, I think he was closer to four-eleven and 95 pounds.
Little Dru didn’t feel in the zone when he entered the game midway through the first quarter. The butterflies were maybe more intense now because it was a state championship. Otherwise he did the same as he did every other game—made the right passes, took the shot if he was open.
The first 3-point attempt came from the left corner, with 3:26 left in the quarter. Feet firmly planted for quick release when he got the feed. The ball heaved in a high arc.
Swish.
Little Dru had hit 3-pointers before—in our first game against Cuyahoga Falls he had hit three in a row, so there was nothing terribly unusual about him hitting one here.
The second 3-point attempt came from the left wing about a minute later. A good five feet behind the line. A shot so deep and ill-advised that even his dad couldn’t help but blanch. Get a grip, Little Dru. Get a grip. You’re not Ray Allen. His defender even got a little piece of it.
Swish.
The third 3-point attempt came with 5:24 left in the second quarter.
Swish.
The fourth came with 4:32 left in the quarter. Six-three defender Josh Carter was fast approaching. But Little Dru released the ball almost as soon as he caught it over Carter’s fingertips. Not a single wasted motion.
Swish.
The basket gave St. V a 2-point lead, 27-25. Little Dru was taken out of the game and sat next to his father, who just looked away. He was scared of fiddling with Little Dru’s rhythm, so he didn’t say a word, not even “Good job.” Even with those four straight 3-pointers, the game’s television announcers were still dismissive and mocking. “He looks like he should be playing in a seventh grade game,” said one. “Maybe it’s a situation where Greeneview just can’t find him,” said another. When Little Dru came back into the game about midway through the third quarter, nobody was smirking.
The fifth 3-point attempt came with 2:16 left in the third quarter from the right corner. Greeneview defender Joe Pauley running to catch up to Little Dru. His release once again was too quick.
Swish.
The sixth attempt, with 1:54 left, from the same spot. Pauley flying to catch him.
Swish.
All in a row to break the game open, the crowd now in shock and awe. As soon as Little Dru touched the ball they went silent, like the entire world had stopped, and as soon it went through the net they erupted in a roar. I had never seen anybody in the zone like Little Dru was in the zone. Eighteen points in 6 minutes of court time. I just kept staring, and I said to myself that if he made one more 3, I just might have to throw him in the rim, I was so excited for him. This was my blood brother, the kid I spent night after night with, the kid I went to the store with, the kid I told everything to, the kid I did everything with.
The seventh 3-point attempt came from the left corner, with 2 seconds left in the quarter.
Swish.
Forget Hoosiers, because this wasn’t some Hollywood film. This was real. This was happening. When he hit that final 3 at the end of the third quarter to give us a 13-point lead, I did lift him in celebration, as if the game was over. I knew it was wrong to act prematurely like that. We still had a quarter left to play. But I was too happy. I loved the accomplishments of my Fab Four brothers as much as my own.
When he came back in, in the fourth quarter, he was fed the ball to try for an eighth 3-pointer, which would have tied the state tournament record for Division III. The crowd wanted him to take the shot. His team wanted him to take the shot. Everybody wanted him to take the shot. Little Dru didn’t think he had a good look, so he didn’t take the shot. Because that’s the kind of player he was even then, utterly disciplined.
Later on, when I looked at the box score, I couldn’t help but laugh. I had never seen anything like it before and would never see anything like it again:
Thanks to Little Dru’s performance, we ended up beating Greeneview 73-55 to remain undefeated and win the state championship. He had finally won the respect he deserved, although there would always be players who thought they were better. Coach Dambrot felt vindicated. Coach Dru felt vindicated. He had the best seat in the house, watching his son from the bench. More than that, he knew what Little Dru had been through, all those comments and snide remarks that he had to hear growing up. Across Akron, Little Dru became an inspiration to kids who were small but still yearned to play basketball. They could not relate to someone who was six-six or six-seven. But they could relate to Little Dru. They taped the picture of him that had appeared in the Akron Beacon Journal to their walls. They saw him as living proof that size really did not matter.
We were only freshmen, and it seemed like things could only get better.
Then came Romeo.
8.
Romeo Oh Romeo
I.
Five players make up a team, of course, not four, and the Fab Four was just that, the Fab Four. I thought of it as a bicycle chain with a link missing; we needed one more piece to make it whole. The link arrived in the form of a sophomore transfer named Romeo Travis. I was the only member of the team who really knew Romeo, since we’d gone to middle school together. Romeo was a beast on the court when he had the desire, about six-six, tough inside on offense and able to block shots on defense, a perfect complement to Sian. At least he seemed perfect, until I remembered how much trouble I had with bicycle chains as a kid.
When that chain holds together, when everything is smooth, it just runs and runs and runs. But if one little link slides off, your chain just pops and you can’t get where you want to go. I could see that Romeo might be the missing link, or the link that popped.
Romeo had gone through a falling-out at Central-Hower as a freshman. He said a basketball coach he was quite close to left the school; then he made a stupid quip that a teacher interpreted as a threatening remark, and the principal of the school said it would be best if he did not return. He had to find another school. I began to work on him to come to St. V, and got the other members of the Fab Four to buy in. Sort of. Maybe. We were tight, maybe too tight, almost cultlike in some ways, so well did we know each other at this point. “He was coming on a new team, and he didn’t know anybody,” Willie observed later. “He had to take care of himself. So that was his demeanor when he came in, he had to look out for himself. He still wasn’t one of us.” Combine that with the personality of Romeo, a self-admitted smart-ass who had trust issues and sharing issues and thought the Fab Four giggled and carried on like little girls. Even before he got to St. V, there were issues. He didn’t like Little Dru because he felt that Little Dru, in going for a steal during a scrimmage in middle school, had scratched him in the eyes on purpose. He didn’t like Sian because he thought that Sian acted like Little Dru’s bodyguard and made himself out to be a bully. Shortly before Romeo came to St. V, he played in a summer league game with Sian and Little Dru. I wasn’t there and Sian was just having fun, playing point guard and shooting 3-pointers an
d feeding the ball to Little Dru in the post. They won handily, but afterward Romeo was angry and upset.
“Man, what’s your problem,” said Sian. “You always got a problem.”
“You’re just out there shooting the ball.”
“It’s only a summer league game. It doesn’t even matter. And we won by thirty.”
“I don’t care. You should have passed me the ball.”
“I’m tired of you acting like that. I’m about to beat your ass right now. Square up. Let’s go.”
“No.”
“Let’s go. Let’s fight right now.”
“I’m not coming here. I’m transferring. I’m going back.”
“Then get your ass out of here. We don’t even need you.”
Romeo softened up toward Willie pretty quickly, but even they’d had a war of words over who had outperformed whom in a middle school basketball game. There was an issue over a girl. Right from the outset, it was a difficult mix. As Romeo said later, “I didn’t want to be there, and they didn’t want me there.”
Part of Romeo’s trouble in getting along was his upbringing. His parents had separated when he was about two, and he and his three siblings were raised by their mother, Carolyn. When he was a baby the family lived in the Elizabeth Park projects, and I knew what that was like because I had once lived there. If the kids went out to play, Carolyn had to go with them just to see what was going on, keep them away from the drugs and the shootings. The family moved to San Francisco for a year, then came back to Akron for a little bit, then to Canton for two years, then back to Akron. Carolyn’s sister moved in with her at various times, giving them a total of eight kids to watch after. They lived in whatever places they could afford when Romeo was young (I knew something about that too)—a house on Cuyahoga Street where the kitchen light never worked and the floor flooded, another one on Lake Street, where the pipes were also bad, in a neighborhood that was rough. The family lived in an apartment complex in East Akron that had more than its share of fighting, little gangs battling for turf. Romeo was too small to be involved. But his oldest sister, La’Kisha, born five years earlier and fearless and in many ways his greatest protector, got into scraps all the time. At another point, the family lived in another complex in East Akron that Romeo described as a “little hell,” a strip of small and cramped apartments in an alley-way off of Arlington Street.