Lebron James is one of the most mature, self sufficient players in the NBA. And one of the most successful athletes off the court in terms of his business acumen and brand building.
Phil was totally wrong in that book.
Thing is Raul quite a few folks were totally wrong about lebron. If you remember when he came out there was a lot of fan fare.
But bubbling underneath there were some who where trying to use the kobe incident (that same summer lebron was drafted) as a way to muddy lebrons name.
There were those who were beating the drum saying well how will he react with money....how do we know he wont be another kobe. Remember there were those who said kobe was nothing more than a low level OJ who pretended to be one guy and then turned out to be another type of guy (once the arrest and the charge happened).
So on a lower level folks like phil were making accusations about lebron without even knowing the man. I can remember how ESPN did an outside the lines report on him and made sure to show the Nike people around him, advisors and what not right before the draft and the guest threw out the whole posse shyt. Even though you knew these folks were advisors (who happened to be black).
People over the years have just forgotten all this shyt cause one after time folks forget the negative shyt people said about people if they were successful. And because lebron came out like gangbusters it really quieted all the negative talk before it could pick up steam.
However the posse shyt did surface again once lebron fired his agent and when he made it to his first finals. The bigot cowherd was happy to bring up posse shyt, him going straight to the NBA from high school and lebron growing up in poverty once he made his first finals.
Cowherd said in his own words how he never imagined someone of lebrons background to be successful in the NBA. While bringing up all the shyt I said above.
