first LeBron James experience came in December 2002, when his St. Vincent–St. Mary High School team played against Oak Hill Academy in Cleveland on ESPN2. James had been on the cover of Sports Illustrated as a junior earlier that year, and I had a vague sense of who he was because of that. But high school basketball players had been on SI covers before, from Rick Mount in 1966 to Kevin Garnett in 1995. That alone wasn’t enough to get me to buy into the hype. It wasn’t until I learned that he would play the top-ranked high school team in the nation in a game airing live on ESPN2 that James had my full attention. I can’t stress enough how inconceivable this sort of thing was back then. If you don’t believe me, read the postgame column written by Jay Bilas (who was part of that ESPN2 broadcast along with Dan Shulman, Dick Vitale, and Bill Walton) in which he wrestled with his conscience over whether it was appropriate to shine a national spotlight on a high school kid.
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