Why do you work so hard when everywhere you turn you keep hearing you’re the man? The number one sophomore in the nation? That’s what a local Ohio sportscaster asked 16-year-old LeBron James in 2001 after he’d just won his second straight state championship. “Every day you’ve got to go out there and work because there’s someone out there working too — and if you stop, I think they can pass you up,” replied the young James, all business just as we’ve come to expect.
When he’s asked if he might lace ’em up for the Ohio State football team a few years from now, 2001-model James says, “I don’t know about that. I don’t know about college football. They hit too hard.” That’s just what lots of NBA teams think about the late model James. Just as determined as the early LeBron James, just as smart, and just as hungry.
