King James and Lord Rick
LeBron bows down to no man, but he's a certified fanboy for avant-garde designer Rick Owens—a proportion wizard whose drapey clothes look better the taller you are.
Vest, $2,061, by Rick Owens / Tank top, $239, and shorts, $570, by Rick Owens / Sneakers, $150, by NikeLab x John Elliot
NBA
LeBron James Is the Greatest Living Athlete (and Here's Why)
BY
MARK ANTHONY GREEN
PHOTOGRAPHS BY
PARI DUKOVIC
an hour ago
LeBron James has been basketball's best player for the better part of 14 years. But it's his work off the court—in business, in movies, and increasingly in politics—that will define the depth of his greatness. We tailed the king from L.A. to New York to Toronto and back again, talking LeBron Inc., MJ, Cleveland, race, and the man we'd come to know simply as "U bum."
Ten days before Donald Trump took on Colin Kaepernick and the NFL and Stephen Curry and the NBA, and before LeBron James, one of the most famous and popular humans in America, called the president of the United States a "bum" on Twitter, I asked him if he thought his adversarial stance against Trump might end up being for him what the Vietnam War was for Muhammad Ali.
"Well," he said, "I think only time will tell."
How so?
"I think Ali represented something bigger than Ali. He wanted to make a change for a future without him included. That's what Ali brought to the table. I don't know what it's like to live in every state in this country, but I know freedom. I know the opportunity that our country has given people, and to see the guy in charge now not understanding that is baffling to not only myself but to my friends and to the people that've helped grow this country. But Muhammad Ali's correlation to the war… I don't think me and Donald Trump could ever get to that point."
The Color of Royalty
Regal purple and bloody red combine to make deep, brooding burgundy, which confers a higher sense of purpose on the boss who wears it.
Coat, $3,050, by Versace / Shorts, $188, by John Elliott / Basketball, $225, by Leather Head Sports / His own bracelets (left) by Cartier / Watch by Audemars Piguet / All jewelry throughout, his own
On the one hand, appraising the greatness of an athlete is an incredibly easy thing to do. There are seasons and statistics and big plays and rings. There are streaks and records and head-to-head matchups and end-of-season accolades. The data, the video clips, the testimonials—it's all there to compare across time. The games don't change as much as other things in society change, and so we can make strong cases, we can make cross-generational arguments, we can say things like: LeBron James is the greatest living athlete. Based on what he's done on the court thus far and what he still could potentially do in years to come.
On the other hand, an athlete's greatness can be defined more expansively. What was their influence? What did they mean? It's almost like the difference between a strict and a broad constructionist. The former looks at only what's there and says, for example: He was a top-three running back based on rushing yards and touchdowns. The latter looks at the expansiveness of the role an athlete plays in their society at a given time and asks: Who were they compared to? Who could they and should they have been? What did they do for their generation? What power did they wield, and to what effect?
LeBron James is, we'd argue, a broad constructionist on the athlete-greatness front. There is LeBron James the basketball player, and he's front and center, he's still number one. But there's a deep understanding of the way this life of his is going to work for decades to come—that one day (maybe not as soon as for some other players, but still) basketball will run out, and it will be on to Phase II. Which is why he spends his off-season cramming his days laying groundwork for what comes next, expanding the universe of LeBron Inc.
“It’s my responsibility. I believe that I was put here for a higher cause. We have people that have been in the higher positions that chose to do it and chose not to do it.”
Over the course of a couple of weeks, I was with him as he premiered a documentary with Drake at the Toronto Film Festival, addressed crème de la crème world leaders in Midtown Manhattan, walked in a fashion show in Hell's Kitchen, and soldiered through a five-hour magazine photo shoot with ninja-military precision in L.A. (He didn't request a single thing during the shoot, not water, not food; he had one fruit snack that I offered him from my pack. It was grape.) I watched up close the ways he transformed expertly from audience to audience, modulating his clothes, and his voice, and his posture, and the way he used his hands (sometimes gesturing wildly, sometimes holding them quietly in a diamond shape at his belt buckle), and even the way he talked about the game he's galactically famous for. (I watched him oversimplify basketball to a roomful of film producers, who he safely assumed might be basketball illiterate, even describing a slam dunk as "one of our best plays in my sport.") He code-switched effortlessly, all depending on who was sitting across the proverbial business table from him.
The King's English
The peacoat had a British heritage even before London label Alexander McQueen stitched it with embroidery worthy of a duke's family crest.
Peacoat, $3,395, by Alexander McQueen / Pants, $845, by Dolce & Gabbana / Custom LeBron 15 sneakers, $175, by Nike / Watch by Patek Philippe / Basketball, $225, by Leather Head Sports
He's deadly serious about his universe of extra-basketball enterprises. And that fact right there is just one of the several arguments for his greatness. He knows the critical importance of Phase II for taking the fame, the exposure, and the influence that he has garnered and cultivated in basketball, and amplifying it to any number of ends. He knows that LeBron without Phase II is…Wilt? Russell? That is, a legacy of greatness on the court for all time, but muted by a relatively quiet life after the game. A quiet life after the game is not for LeBron James.
Which is why, over the years, he's spent such energy and shrewdness assembling the people around him—a Dream Team of old friends and new partners and experts in this field and that, who strategically operate within every emerging arena for him. The team is critical. The team will go a long way to priming the potential greatness of LeBron James in Phase II.
"I have people around me, for the most part, that've been around me for a long time," he told me. "So when you've been around people for a long time, there's no sugarcoating, there's no trying to put you higher than what you should be, there's no yes-men or -women, there's no gas. It's just straight-up, raw, uncut, unfiltered knowledge, truth, passion."
A Coat Fit for...You Know
To get on Bron's level, you need the softest, fluffiest shearling known to man. Then you flex even harder with the rarest, most coveted sneakers.
Coat, $7,850, by Dsquared2 / Sweatshirt, $76, by King London / Sweatpants, $580, by Maison Margiela / Sneakers, $170, by Nike x Virgil Abloh / NBA socks, $28, by Nike
No matter how grand an athlete's ambitions outside the arena, their influence is limited if they're not exceptionally dominant in it. Despite the best ideas or the most benevolent intentions, their potential influence correlates with their talent. It just does. They can't do what LeBron James wants to do in the world if they haven't already made their case on the court. Which is, of course, why the greatness of this athlete in particular obviously starts there.
Despite LeBron's having won just—"just"—four MVP awards, no player has been more consistently dominant and impactful over the past decade and a half in the NBA. And yet it's hard to see when the downturn will come. Somehow at 32 and on the verge of Season 15, he's in better shape than he was during his rookie year. ("I feel amazing," he told me while getting a hand massage.) Veteran LeBron has double the muscle and seemingly none of the body fat of Rookie LeBron. He looks like an action figure—an unrealistic one at that. But you don't charge up and down the court like a freight train, guarded by every team's best and most physical defender game in and game out, 39 minutes a night, without showing a little wear and tear somewhere.
As far as I could tell, he has only two physical tells that confirm his mortality. The first? His feet. Every ballplayer has busted-up, twisted feet. But the King's are exceptionally wrung out. They look like they went 12 rounds with the bear from The Revenant.
The other? Two scars on the back of his head you can only see up close.
How'd you get those scars on the back of your head?
"One, I got elbowed."
In a basketball game?
"In practice, when I was in Miami."
Really?! By who? I bet they were nervous.
"Yeah, they were! I won't say who it was, though." He laughs. "My own teammate elbowed me.… Sixteen [stitches] across the back."
The other scar?
"During the Finals I fell into a camera, against Golden State. The first time we played them."
Did you have any stitches then?
"No, I actually—this was just glue. It was going to be staples, but I told them, 'Don't fukking staple my head.' And they put in the glue, and it didn't heal right. We kept this one under wraps, though."
Why?
"Because we don't talk about injuries. I don't talk about injuries."
Vest, $2,061, by Rick Owens / Tank top, $239, and shorts, $570, by Rick Owens / Sneakers, $150, by NikeLab x John Elliot
The fact that LeBron hasn't been seriously injured isn't just something that explains his dominance—it's becoming almost like a mythic quality surrounding him, a suggestion of infallibility that's useful to propagate for the intimidation factor alone. It's a fact that is key to unlocking the whole recipe—the unmatched talent, yes; the unfettered intensity, sure; but more than anything, that physical consistency, the ability to just play, to stay in the game. The most high-profile player in sports can have his head busted open—during the NBA Finals, no less—and he keeps it a secret because glue will be sufficient.
When it comes to on-court greatness, LeBron beats MJ—and every other athlete—for these factors and more, and because he has the legitimate potential to play the game of basketball at the highest level longer than anyone else. Or, as he put it when I asked how he thought he could become greater than MJ in most people's eyes: "If I was the most consistent and was at the top of the food chain more than anybody in NBA history." He's been to seven straight NBA Finals and could seemingly play at that level for another 10 seasons—25 total. That's astonishing. And no one has been "the greatest" for decades.
Would you play when you're washed up? If you love doing it, but you weren't…
"I know I won't be able to play at this level forever, but to be washed and play… I don't know if I can play washed."
Maybe you'll play against little Bronny when he gets to the league?
"I don't know if I could play washed, but I damn sure would love to stick around if my oldest son can have an opportunity to play against me. That'd be, that'd be the icing on the cake right there."
Yeah, but you can't let him embarrass you out there, though.
"I'll foul the shyt out of him!" He laughs. "I'd give him all six fouls. I'd foul the shyt out of Bronny, man."
Yeah, like every time he tries to shoot.
"On sight: Flagrant 2!"
