The part of the LeBron story that doesn’t get mentioned enough is how a kid that was projected to be the Best There Ever Will Be when he was a junior in high school has, more or less, lived up to those ridiculous expectations.
Prodigies are everywhere. Regardless of the vocation, reaching those heights -- LeBron made the cover of SI at 16 years old, dubbed ‘The Chosen One’ -- is nearly impossible to do. And LeBron did it.
Might his son be traveling down that same path?
LeBron Jr. already went viral last summer with a mixtape in which he was roasting the 10 year olds he was playing against. And now, according to a nugget in a story from ESPN following Cleveland’s NBA title on Sunday night, he has offers from Duke and Kentucky already:
There are two points to be made here:
1. LeBron Jr. does not have offers from Duke or Kentucky. College programs don’t recruit sixth graders, even if they are the spawn of the greatest basketball player of all-time.
2. LeBron Sr. has a relationship with both Mike Krzyzewski and John Calipari. Krzyzewski coaches Team USA, and there was a point in time, when the two shared the same agency, that Coach Cal used LeBron as something of a recruiting tool. It’s pretty normal for people in the basketball world to talk about their children’s basketball ability. If the standard for a scholarship offer is a coach telling a parent something along the lines of, “Of course we’re going to recruit your son,” then my 10-month old son has more than a dozen scholarship offers from high major programs.
3. If LeBron Jr. wants to go to Duke or Kentucky, he’ll be going to Duke or Kentucky. That’s not controversial, either. There isn’t a program in the country that would ever turn down the son of a legend like LeBron. David Robinson’s son is currently a walk-on at Duke, as is Nick Pagliuca, who is the son of one of the owners of the Boston Celtics. That’s before you consider the obvious Nike ties.
This isn’t a difficult thing to figure out.
But I guess the internet isn’t designed for common sense.