Jeff Benedict — LeBron - with Timothy Bella

all right well um good evening everyone and uh welcome to politics and Pros I'm Brad Graham the co-owner of the bookstore along with my wife Alyssa Muscatine and uh we're very pleased to be hosting uh Jeff Benedict uh who's here to talk about his new book uh Lebron uh Jeff's had uh quite a varied career he practiced law for a while and was active in politics uh even ran for congress in uh in Connecticut a couple of decades ago and then worked to uh to limit gambling in that state he's been a journalist writing for such Publications as Sports Illustrated and the Los Angeles Times and along the way he's authored or co-authored more than a dozen works of non-fiction these have included best-selling books about Tiger Woods and the New England Patriots as well as a legal thriller little pink house about a landmark case on eminent domain and poisoned about the biggest food poisoning outbreak in the United States he's also had a hand in producing documentaries or movies based on some of his books his new biography about LeBron James is about someone of course many of us think we already know and about whom much has has been written but Jeff has produced what reviewers are calling the definitive biography of this astonishingly successful Sports Superstar and the book is not just thorough and thoughtful but also written vividly and engagingly as the Los Angeles Times put it the book quote doesn't miss a shot so I expect we're in for a very Illuminating discussion this evening conversation with Jeff will be Timothy Bella who's a staff writer and editor at the Washington Post with the papers General assignment team focusing on breaking news Tim actually helped research Jeff's book early on and then went off to write a biography of his own about another NBA legend Charles Barkley which came out last year Tim's currently working on a second book this one about actor and filmmaker Sylvester Stallone so ladies and Gentlemen please join me in welcoming Jeff Benedict and Tim Bella thank you so much guys I really appreciate it again and Jeff this is just incredible because we met how many years back now it's 2010 I think it was 2010. yeah and I was in a rough spot I had just no experience if the industry was terrible and yet I gravitated toward people like Jeff who gave me a chance and now I'm I'm stable in an unstable world so thank you so much and this is also just a really cool opportunity for me because in high school when LeBron James was a senior I was a totally a junior and I would see this guy on ESPN and I was just amazed I had never seen anything like him before and the fact that he's lived up to those expectations and exceeded them um it's incredible and it's all captured here in this book it's an amazing book I really urge anyone who hasn't gone it to please go check it out so it just kind of started off Jeff I know you've done Tiger Woods you've done the two England Patriots including Tom Brady and that obviously so I guess what appealed to you so much to take on argue a biggest topic right now the biggest athlete right now LeBron James well first of all thank you for inviting us here to your store um and to the audience for coming and uh spending an hour with us um for me to be honest LeBron wasn't my idea um I wish I could take credit for it because it is a fantastic idea for a book and a biography but both LeBron and Tiger Woods were ideas that were brought to me by my publisher and my literary agent in between I did the Patriots which was my idea and something that I had wanted to do for a long time but after doing tiger and the Patriots LeBron to me was the only um male athlete left in America that I think we could say is in the conversation for the greatest of all time in his sport right now I think tiger fit that for golf Tom Brady fits that for football and LeBron fits that for basketball and I think probably Serena Williams is the one other person who fits that for tennis and so it was just an opportunity that to me as soon as it was presented I thought this is it's so obvious and sometimes the best ideas are right in front of us and we miss them but um the other thing about LeBron that appealed to me right away was that he's so much more than an athlete and there's so much more to him not that there's nothing wrong with only being a Transcendent athlete but in LeBron's case um there is so much more to the man than the sport the fact that he is involved or has been involved in politics in social activism in building a school and forming a friendship with Barack Obama getting involved in the Arts and entertainment building a production company there were all these other things that to me is his entry into the Fashion World that may I don't know that I would have been as interested if it was just going to be a basketball book about a great basketball player but the fact that LeBron had so much more texture to his life was exciting there through so many things I enjoy about this book Jeff and one of the big themes in this book was family whether it be the relationship with his mother the relationship with his wife to his best friends how he took them all and it made him um into a billion dollar athlete and we also talk about um the father figures in his life and how how um he does not know who his biological father is and he doesn't care but along with the way he found uh that male mentorship in so many different people including two very different people the first one is Warren Buffett and the second one is um if you're Jay-Z and and for for someone like that the basketball player still in his uh ho 20s pow then why did he gravitate toward somewhat like Jay-Z or someone like Warren Buffett who were much older and had a thought of poor experience than he did how did that happen well I think in the case of um a case of gravitating towards Jay-Z it's just more that when LeBron is a you know as a kid and a young teenager like a lot of his peers and Friends he loved his music and it's very similar to why would he gravitate towards Michael Jordan well because he idolized him and so what was unique was that as a teenager he had the opportunity to meet Jay-Z which most teenagers wouldn't have that opportunity LeBron had that opportunity solely because he was such an exceptionally talented athlete at a young age that Jay-Z took the time to come and watch him play live and then remarkably when when LeBron goes straight from high school to professional basketball he you know he passes go and doesn't stop because he he never everybody knew he would never go to college because he was too good and what's remarkable is that that summer between when he was drafted as the number one pick and when he played his first game in the fall as a Cleveland Cavalier he did something that would never happen today which is he went and played on Jay-Z's you know uh private team in New York City they had a league that Jay-Z had a team in and they played for something called the chip and these teams were basically loaded up by you know a lot of a lot of local players in New York City that were playground legends but back then you know Jay-Z was trying to recruit some some real ringers and he recruited LeBron to come and play that summer on his team in New York that kind of craziness would never work today with the way the NBA controls them but that was the start of a genuine friendship because that summer he hung out with LeBron a lot I mean with Jay-Z a lot and they actually built a real relationship that wasn't just a famous kid athlete and a famous you know rapper hip-hop artist producer who were hanging around because famous people like to hang around with each other they actually became truly friends Warren Buffett is a totally different thing I mean Warren Buffett isn't someone that LeBron idolized as a teenager but within a very short time after signing a 90 million dollar contract with Nike when he was 18 years old and a massive contract with the Cleveland Cavaliers and other endorsement deals LeBron was a lot smarter than most entertainers never mind athletes all entertainers in trying to surround himself with advisors who were experts in things like how to invest your money how to protect your money how to do things other than just do endorsement deals which athletes do but how do you actually do something besides that like maybe own a piece of the company and one of the people who was advising him very early was had a great relationship with Buffett LeBron wanted to meet him and his advisor brokered that meeting and then LeBron took the initiative to fly to Omaha to meet with him you know went to his office spent a day with him and started a what grew into a legitimate friendship and LeBron did all that when he was like 20 years old and so if you think I mean those of us in the room who are a little older and you think back like what were you thinking about and doing when you were 18 19 and 20 it's fair to say he was more mature I think than a lot of people his age he was certainly more mature at that age than I was at that age I was terrible at that age just uh for the record um yeah and that there is a third person he gravitates toward it's hasn't Obama and Senator Obama too and at that point in time LeBron had not honed in on his political voice he hadn't really found it yet and and yet he hears what Obama says when he performs it on 08 and again in 2012 and it invigorates him and it opens up his mind in a way he hadn't felt before and he just creating this book it's a reminder of how that relationship was so special and so it's important to him at that age tell me how did that influence him it's just actually change it in terms of how he thought about politics and that and social issues Jeff so I think when you when you look at the formation of LeBron's relationship with Barack Obama this actually takes us back to his relationship with Jay-Z and it actually supports the idea that this wasn't just what I said a minute ago celebrity famous people hanging around each other what I'm about to say will sort of illustrate why this relationship had real significance to it in the beginning of his basketball career which when LeBron becomes a pro he's 18 years old he is literally a teenager um he's not knowledgeable in the area of politics he's never had a need to be like most 18 year olds he's not really paying attention to that particularly because his life at this point is so focused on the fact that he is being compared to Michael Jordan he's got this huge mantle on his shoulders which is the Sports Illustrated has deemed him the chosen one The Heir Apparent to Air Jordan the expectations that are on this kid are unprecedented uh in professional sports Michael Jordan didn't have those expectations on him when he joined the NBA Tom Brady certainly didn't have him when he came in the closest thing was maybe Tiger Woods who had those similar but I would say not as much no one was saying he's going to be the next Jack Nicklaus and and so LeBron was focused on that rightly so the first time he really encounters politics is in 2006. when it's we're now in the run-up to the um Beijing Olympics which are going to take place in 2008 and in the run-up to the Beijing Olympics there are uh groups that are meeting actually in this city Washington DC and they're planning you could even say plotting how they will leverage the Olympics to put political pressure on China for human rights abuses in various parts of the world one of those being Sudan and so um one of those groups that was very well organized and had some good leaders they actually connected with one member of the Cleveland Cavaliers guy I play her name Ira nubley who was a bench player a great guy but he was a bench player that most people wouldn't know by name unless you were a die-hard Cavs fan at the time noobly was very interested in civil rights and human rights and he signed on to help this organization put a spotlight on what was going on in Sudan and used the Olympics to do it and so this one of these groups helped irenely craft a letter that he then asked all of his teammates on the Cleveland Cavaliers to sign and the letter really kind of called out China because of what was going on in Sudan to be honest none of these players including Ira knew anything about what was going on in Sudan Ira was educated by this group but he was so struck by it that he said yeah I'll write that letter and I'll get my teammates to sign it and this is where it starts to get dicey for LeBron and this is not a knock on I renewbly but when you're the 12th player on the bench and you don't have the largest shoe contract in sports it's easier to sign up for something like this because what you say doesn't cause international news if LeBron says something about this it's similar to if someone in the president's Administration says something about it it's going to be an an international story LeBron didn't know anything about Sudan he didn't know anything about China's connection to it in fact his friend Warren Buffett was asked this about the same thing because Warren Buffett's company Berkshire Hathaway one of the companies they invested in was a petrol company that was connected to this arms and stuff going on in Sudan and basically Buffett's answer to all his shareholders was yeah we're not going to change what we do it's unfortunate what's going on over there but it doesn't really affect us and that's it but LeBron decided not to sign the letter he was and he and one other player on the team were the only two that didn't and as soon as he did that the New York Times covered it and every other newspaper and media Outlet in the United States and it became a problem for him because he was repeatedly questioned about why he didn't sign it mind you this is going on in the middle of the NBA Playoffs that he's getting hit with this and then he has what some people would say is the greatest game of his career in the middle of all this against the Detroit Pistons LeBron has the game of his life where he literally is it's like one of the few times where one man beats five and it is a stunning performance that makes everybody forget about Sudan and China for a season then the Olympics come and when LeBron actually goes to Beijing it starts up all over again and this time he he basically takes the position he says two things first he says I don't know enough about this to talk about it which by the way was true and number two you shouldn't Mix Sports and politics that's the more controversial statement given where he's going to end up so that's that now here's the thing that's the summer of 2008. think about so he's in Beijing dealing with this think about what's happening in America in the summer of 08 Barack Obama is on a run to the white house that looks like it might actually happen and when LeBron comes back from Beijing with the gold here's where Jay-Z comes in Jay-Z was very motivated to help Barack Obama win and capture the White House he talked openly about the idea that a black man would occupy the White House would be Unthinkable when he was a teenager if someone had said that to him then he would have thought you were crazy but here it looked like it could actually happen and so he decided to do a series of concerts in support of Barack Obama's candidacy in different cities right up before the election and the last one was in Cleveland and LeBron agreed to go and participate in the concert and speak to what would be essentially a sold out Auditorium which just happened to be the same Auditorium where the Cavaliers played their home games and that's the first time that LeBron actually took a political stance on anything and he told the audience he was voting for Barack Obama he told the audience this was the most important election of their lifetime Jay-Z said similar thing and then LeBron encouraged everyone there to get their aunts and their uncles and their moms and their sisters and everybody to go out and vote that that's his entry point to politics of course Obama does win he does capture the White House and then he does something that no American president had ever done before which was he then turns to NBA players not just LeBron but a bunch of NBA players including retired players like Magic Johnson and and seeks their help in some of his um his agenda his basically his domestic agenda one of which was Health Care and he gets people like LeBron to to do public service announcements because they realize that one of the groups that was most underinsured and not participating in the website to sign up was the minority Community where LeBron had influence that's why he did the the ad and this is a guy getting paid millions of dollars to do commercials he did these commercials for free because this wasn't about money and the Republicans like Mitch McConnell and some of the guys in the house they didn't like the fact that Obama was using these celebrity athletes to move the needle but that's over the eight years that Barack Obama was in the White House LeBron I would say grew up and I say that in a complimentary way think about going to school with the president of the United States a guy who could truthfully say in 2007 I don't know enough to talk about this to to get to a point eight years later where he is the lead voice on I can't breathe on gun violence on talking about police brutality in minority communities but not in a way that attacks the police I mean that takes a lot of skill to to walk that line LeBron James never attacked police he never said defund them he never really criticized them he actually just talked about what it's like to be in his community he he did some what I would call very diplomatic things that came in my view at least from the benefit of watching one of the most skilled political leaders we've had in the last 50 years he watched him and he saw how uh a perfect example I mean when Trayvon Martin was shot for wearing a hooded sweatshirt the president didn't attack people he just pointed out he had Sons they would look like that and of course LeBron is in a position where he does have sons and they do look like that and so I thought that to me one of the most remarkable things about the Obama years was watching the maturation of a young LeBron James who in my mind is he is an older LeBron James and I'm not really talking about calendar years here I'm talking about how much he aged in terms of his political skills and diplomacy LeBron's not a flamethrower there are certain celebrities who when they speak out they alienate everybody LeBron has never been about that and some people would Trump supporters would say well but if you look at the record and you really want to look at the facts LeBron was incredibly disciplined with with Donald Trump most for months and I would even say for over a year he never used his name when he was asked about him he just talked about issues and then eventually it got to the point where it was impossible not to invoke his name but I would say he was very disciplined are you looking at my notes by the way no I keep not looking at your notes I think all of his topics here speaking of Donald Trump since we're on that topic now um take me back actually to the first time that Trump who's publicly engages with LeBron James and this is actually during his free agency and in the book there is just a great story about Donald Trump and the uh actual pitch he tried to make to LeBron James to become a New York Knick what happened there Jeff my friend LeBron um so in 2010 this is actually the reason I like this story so much is because it isn't political and it's actually hilarious in many respects and and Incredibly entertaining which is a big reason why it's in the book to be quite honest but the in 2010 a bunch of teams were campaigning and competing for LeBron Services it was a great situation for Lebron and uh you know the New York Knicks were one of those teams that were competing to win LeBron over and get him to come and they were trying to figure out what could they offer besides you know the contract's going to be the same pretty much no matter where he goes so what can the Knicks do that the other teams can't and the Knicks really leaned into the fact that it's the big apple it's New York City it's the media capital of the world it's you know the glitz the glamor the you know all the stuff that could happen for LeBron's uh off the court career if he was in New York and there's some validity to that the fact is I don't think any of that really appealed to LeBron he wanted one thing which was he wanted to win championships but the Knicks had this idea that they were going to pitch LeBron by making a film where they took all the biggest celebrities in New York and basically got them to go on camera and talk to LeBron about why he should become a Nick and come to New York and so they got you know Robert De Niro and Mark Messier and Rudy Giuliani and it just everybody all these actors Harvey Weinstein I mean it's Gandolfini James Falco yeah James Gandolfini was the best one because Gandolfini had been off the air The Sopranos had been off the air for for three years and what's fascinating and and I made this connection in the book is the last episode of The Sopranos aired at the same time that LeBron was playing in his first NBA Finals as a Cavalier they lost they got swept in that series but it it I used it to say you know The Sopranos and Tony Soprano and was going off the stage as LeBron was really taking over the American Stage No7 now we get to Oten and LeBron loves The Sopranos by the way he loves mob movies and like The Godfather and so he likes Gandolfini and the Knicks asked Gandolfini if he would be in this film but the difference with Gandolfini was everyone else is just talking to LeBron they wanted Gandolfini to do a bit like get back in character as Tony like he's coming out of the witness protection program because we all know how that show ended we don't know what happened and so he agreed to do it and so did Edie Falco to go back in in character and the filmmaker goes to New York and they hired a great documentary filmmaker to do this and he interviewed them in Tony's apartment it's a great scene I'm not going to tell you what happens because you got to get that out of the book but the Trump part is Trump was one of the people that that they approached about getting in this film so when they go to Trump Tower to do this in the book you'll see like Trump's very specific instructions about the lighting and the hair gel and all the foolishness that goes on but basically also the the impatience of it when he sits down like how long is this going to be and what are we doing you know what are we doing and it's like we're trying to convince LeBron to come to the oh my but my friend LeBron you know and it's all this Ridiculousness because particularly because what's going to happen five years later you know it's it's like it's funny now but it's it's not gonna be funny in five years and I think what what I thought you were going to ask me Tim when you said the first time I thought you're gonna ask me the first time that LeBron and Trump intersect politically I was going to ask you about that next yeah actually but um so with her jokes do stop once Trump gets in office and obviously there is a lot of talk um uh when Trump is in office targeted at Colin Kaepernick and uh actually Steph Curry too as well who speaks out about not showing up to the White House and then LeBron famously saying you bum um on social media towards the president and it kind of started his rivalry between a president and one of the world's most famous athletes that we just haven't seen before and never ever so as you are actually breaking this down Jeff how do you dissect what unfolds with a president who was always online and an athlete in a Brawn who does read out of the stuff that gets written about him because those are two really unique personalities from uh up top just going at each other like that yeah I would say that the I mean to me well before Donald Trump became president he saw LeBron as an adversary and a rival and that's simply starts with the fact that LeBron campaigned for Hillary Clinton I mean he was campaigning for Trump's adversary and he wrote an op-ed uh endorsing her candidacy for president talked about why it was in the best interest of the country for the country to elect her never mentioned Trump by the way ever in in her entire candidacy never once did he utter the words Donald Trump um when he campaigned with her in person which he did in Cleveland he never mentioned Donald Trump's name um and if you recall it was right before the very famous debate between uh Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump that occurred right after the Access Hollywood tape was leaked by The Washington Post who put that audio out of Donald Trump coming off a bus talking about women and what he could get away with and what he had done to them in the past and using a lot of crude language that tape was leaked right before the debate and the reason this LeBron ends up getting pulled into this is because you'll recall that Trump's defense and he said this in the debate was that was locker room talk he said that in front of the whole country that's what he it was locker room talk well the minute that happened naturally the Press is going to ask the most famous athlete in America what he thinks about that so LeBron didn't have a press conference he didn't like put out an op-ed he didn't say I want to talk about this he was asked about it and that's what happens when you're in the position that he's in you get asked about a lot of things that you probably wouldn't talk about if the Press didn't ask you about it so he was asked about candidate Trump's locker room talk defense and his answer to me was one of the most powerful things he's ever said in a political Forum which by the way he said this in a locker room but what he said was he said I have a mother I have a daughter I have a wife and we don't talk like that in our locker room I mean he never mentioned Trump's name I mean to me that is one of the most powerful things an athlete can say you know I have women in my life that I love I have a daughter I'm married I have a mom we don't talk like that in our locker room when LeBron James says we don't talk like that in the locker room they don't talk like that in the locker room because he's the leader of the locker room and I'll tell you it's not just his locker room I interviewed male athletes in the NFL who told me how that statement impacted them how it because there were a lot of athletes who were offended by that by the grab them by the whatever language and then say well that's just locker room talk there's a lot of married athletes who have moms and daughters who did not like being grouped into that as if this is how we all are but it took someone like LeBron actually voicing it which now makes it easier for the other guys to also say the same thing and so when I talk about LeBron being so much more mature in the way he deals with what would for most people be a sand trap this question is loaded and there's so many ways you could answer this and cause a controversy what he did was he answered it and basically let everybody know I love my daughter I love my wife I love my mom I don't condone any of that that's not who I am and the men that I play basketball with that's not who they are never mentioning anybody else's name you know we could stop right there and just say that's the end of the discussion this thing is over because to me that that one of my favorite call it an anecdote or whatever you want but when I when I got to write that passage I mean I was on Morning Joe the day after the book came out and I got to tell that story on MSNBC to the country in the morning a political show and I have to say it was one of the few times as a journalist that I actually felt like it felt really good to quote the language of an athlete who has the courage to talk like that and then just stand behind it and and be quietly he it's almost like recognizing the power in a low voice and just the power of the message and it's like I don't have anything else to say now I'm really happy to actually brought up that passage in particular because I know me just being a sports fan uh and other cover of History who go back and hear what Ali and Bill Russell and Jim Brown who just passed away the those guys were talking about back then who could drive with LeBron in that era and I I feel like you would hold up as well possibly Eve and better just based on on how he's doing and it it's all it's also kind of has the native to how he's put his if his money where his mouth is to talk about him being a billion dollar athlete but he's put thought of that back toward the I promise School in Akron and the other stuff he's done in terms of his education initiatives and uh creating jobs for uh fact men and women and I guess understanding that Jeff how could you describe the impact he's had off of a court and just putting his focus upon stuff like education and housing at a time when at least back then that wasn't a popular thing to do at least once a lot of athletes yeah you know there's always there's always risks when you try to compare athletes from different Generations whether you're comparing them athletically or if you're talking about more serious things like civil rights and so I know Michael Jordan never wanted to be compared to Bill Russell as a basketball player because he would say they played in different eras the game was different blah blah blah I think you could say the same thing basketball wise about Michael Jordan and LeBron James when you get to civil rights and things like that LeBron doesn't want to be compared to Muhammad Ali because that's a that's a big you know outsized character I suspect Muhammad Ali probably wouldn't want to be compared to Jackie Robinson that was a different era here's what I would say about it is different eras different circumstances different times LeBron James in this time in this era to me it's easy to say that he is in a he he would fit really well if he lived in those other eras and was a colleague or an associate of Arthur Ashe and Bill Russell and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and some of these other players who had a social conscience and weren't afraid to use it now in those days none of those guys made money the way LeBron has in this era there is a disincentive for a high profile athletes to socially and politically engage Michael Jordan famously didn't do that and I'm not saying that to criticize him that's his right that's his decision he made his decision and and I'm not going to criticize him for it I'm just saying that LeBron made his decision in his decision by choosing to engage as the the richest athlete in America he made a decision some people say well it's easy for him to do that he's got all the money in the world it's not like that there's actually more risk for him because he is now considered in many quarters of this country as a divisive figure people that don't like him because he wouldn't shut up and dribble people that don't like him because he decided to challenge the president United States in a very public way and take him on he he has done a bunch of things that I think demonstrate he certainly has the courage to fit in with those other pillars who who are athletes and had their time I think if LeBron had grown up in the 60s or 70s he would have been with those guys it's interesting in this era he's kind of alone I mean that's what I would say he's kind of alone um there are not a lot of first of all he is alone in the ranks of where he sort of is as an athlete I mean I think Tom and tiger are are there with him but that's about it but even in the NBA when you look at the other so-called Superstars none of them have really done what LeBron LeBron's done a lot of things that that get no mention like the fact that he formed um a voter registration advocacy group in the middle of a campaign during a time when Republicans were trying to basically block minorities from being able to vote he was in in the key cities and key Battleground States particularly in minority districts he put the money there to get people registered to vote he made calls the way a congressman would make calls for a colleague LeBron would sit home and call people to get them to go out and vote and to support specific candidates in specific districts he he built a school I mean I mean just think of that sentence he built a school I mean no one else has done that that that is kind of a sentence that makes you scratch your head and go he's a basketball player yeah but he built a school and not just any old school but a school that has like a commissary in it where you can get toothpaste and toothbrushes and food and soap and why is there a school like that because LeBron knows what it's like to grow up in a community where those things are not readily available in the house before a kid leaves to go to school and so he wanted a school where kids could go there there's a great moment where the CEO of Walmart who's agreed to help Supply the the school with these things and he's basically LeBron's talking to him about what it's like to be hungry the CEO of Walmart has no idea what it's like to be hungry he's never been hungry the other Executives who were there for this conversation one of them told me one of the executives who was there for this conversation said when when LeBron was talking I was thinking to myself I don't know what it's like to be hungry I have never felt hunger pains LeBron has and so even if you go into that school and you look at how that school is made all of those things are literally outgrowths of what he lived and that's why I do think it's not a stretch to say he is in a category by himself when he called president Trump you bum on Twitter it wasn't because the president attacked him it was because the president attacked Steph Curry LeBron's rival on the basketball court that's who he's his biggest rival his biggest rival on the basketball court is Steph Curry the president attacked curry in a tweet and LeBron jumped into the fight before Curry could even defend himself LeBron jumped in and did it for him and that to me I I'm just saying this is a guy you want on your team I mean I don't mean to get emotional about it but like this is the kind of guy you want on your team you want him living in your neighborhood you want him on your block I mean and I think the reason that all the guys on the Golden State Warriors who wanted to beat LeBron so badly by the time they were playing him for the third time the NBA finals it's hard to hate a guy that's so loyal to you he's helping everybody and so that's why Draymond Green doesn't want to yeah he might knock LeBron down but after the game he's going to put his arms around him and say you know we're brothers yeah well he could talk all night especially about basketball but I do just want to open up for anyone who has any uh questions we have the microphone right here so if you have them I advise you to to step up because if not I've got some more so ah good actually I have a couple to start with so Jeff you obviously admire so much about uh Lebron James but you start the book with uh one of the moments that um I think it's fair to say if he were to do over again he would do it differently right when he announces that he's uh leaving Cleveland and going to Miami why why do you choose that moment to begin this uh very thorough and admiring biography that's a really good question from a writing standpoint I love answering it's really important I mean the hardest decision that a biographer has to make or actually anybody who's writing a book has to make is where to begin where do you bring the audience into the story or in the case of a biography where do you bring the audience into the life of the subject and I have always subscribed to the theory that you need to bring them into the into their life in the moment where they cross over what does that mean crossover LeBron's life up to that point I'm not look his childhood his origin story is like Charles Dickens novels I mean it's it is as hard as hard can be but in his professional adult life the part of the life that we think we know this is the moment where LeBron crosses over from just a great basketball player that everybody kind of admires for his athleticism to now someone that everybody in America has an opinion about and a lot of people's opinion is negative and for the first time in his career he's dealing with hatred he's like violent hatred uh racist hatred it's he is Public Enemy Number One in American Sports and that all turns in an hour on live television so to me this is the moment to bring the reader into the life to show the reader that this is a textured multi-dimensional life that you're going to read about it's not all dunks and championships it's not all basketball there's a lot more to this man than that because the way this chapter ends is when all hell is breaking loose that night and he is being the owner of the Cleveland Cavaliers is saying things about him in a public forum that no one would ever want said about them and the New York Times has already declared the Miami Heat the the new evil empire within an hour of this when he lands in Miami at two o'clock that morning and it's bad and his fiancee says essentially to him but you've been through worse than this that's how the chapter ends because it's the perfect segue to now go back to what she's talking about which is his upbringing and and so to me that's why I did it that way because now I want to take you to this is just this is really just stupidity media getting all hyped up about something that really isn't that important this is an athlete deciding where he wants to be employed and we're acting like you know this is like a world hunger problem all of a sudden it's not that big of a deal except that he's famous you want to see something that actually really matters let's go to where he grew up and so that's what I was doing there right the other question I have is you know you did a heck of a lot of research on this book and a number of the reviews have described it as very well researched one thing you weren't able to do was to talk to LeBron for a book uh if if you had been able to is there something that you couldn't figure out couldn't get an answer to that you would have asked him I I think it's most of the time I believe it's better for the biographer not to talk to the subject um look most of the best biographies that people in this room have read are written about dead people presidents from the past founding fathers great scientists that lived long ago um you know when you write about someone who's living It's Tricky if you're talking to that person and having a relationship and a dialogue I think it's better in most cases and I believe it was in this case as I believe it was in the Tiger Woods case to have not had those direct conversations with LeBron someday I suspect LeBron will write an autobiography and he'll choose a writer a skilled writer to help him write it and he'll write the biography that he wants to write as he should but this is not that this is an objective deep dive by a biographer who looked at his life and um the truth is he can say I didn't have anything to do with that and the truth is I can say he didn't influence me one way or the other I mean that's that's what it is it's what I saw it's what I see and if someone says well it's pretty glowing it's like he glows I mean it is what it is I can't like I can't help the fact that this guy has done all of these things if you want to talk to me about China well let's talk about it but I mean I'm I'm not afraid to talk about anything this guy's done I just think his life he's lived his life this way is there one particular thing though you would have liked to have asked them for the book I mean yeah if there was one thing I could sit down and ask him in a in a private conversation is I would love to know more I'd actually rather ask his wife but I I think the most interesting thing about him that I couldn't probe deeper on is the relationship between them because relationships between husbands and wives are just hard enough to begin with and this when you put a spotlight on a relationship and you wrap it in Celebrity and fame and money and all the trappings that have ruined so many celebrity couples that we all know about once again he's they have not he they they have defied that and I the fact that they have been together since they were in high school if you were a Hollywood film writer and you created this story you'd get laughed out of the building because it's too polyamic and ridiculously just not realistic the fact that they did this and they're still together and they've raised a beautiful family look that's what I'm saying like it is what it is I would love to know more about that and the truth is not just me selfishly but if you want to talk about how you can really help people how they made that work is they're Universal lessons in that that I think would benefit a lot of people no one is capable of listening to LeBron talk and then going out and being the kind of basketball player that he is no one can do that but there's a lot of people that could try to implement some of the things that he's done as a man and as a husband and a father in their own homes and be effective any other questions guys she has one go ahead I know you do yeah yeah Step Up so relating to what you just said did you find it hard to be so objective because I read a review I think it was the LA Times where they were saying you were straying away from hagiography so I was wondering was that hard because you love him so much no I I wouldn't say that I love him so much because it's hard to love someone you've never you know built a personal relationship with so I wouldn't say that but what I would say is when you choose to take on a subject's life you don't get to pick and choose what comes with that life you get all of it so you you have to I can honestly say when I agreed to write this book about LeBron I had no idea what I was getting into I knew the superficial stuff that you know anybody else would know who's awake but there's a lot about him that I didn't know like 90 of what's in the book I didn't know and so I didn't know what I was going to find and or what I was going to see or what people would tell me or stuff like that and all I can say is it was pleasantly surprising and there was never a Time after a day of writing on LeBron where I went to bed sad or depressed I can't say that about some of the other books I've written where there were times when I went to bed just like oh this is brutal it's brutal I never felt that way with LeBron I mean it yeah the early chapters are tough when he's a boy but um no I I didn't I just you know yeah there was an admiration there I'm not going to deny that because and and I'm not a it's not the basketball part again I the human qualities that that I saw with him that's the stuff that I was just glad to be able to write that it was nice for a change to be in a position to write a story like that and have it be what it was thank you and then also what was your process like to like start researching him where do you start because you have so so much extensive research excellent question um I I you know honestly uh I'm gonna answer it but it's one of the few questions I don't like to answer and I'll tell you why it's not because I have anything to hide it's just because um I don't really like to talk about the method too much Beyond what's in the source notes I have I'm a big big believer in Source notes that's why I have you know almost 100 pages of them in this book Source notes are important and I do not like reading these kinds of books that are without Source notes so I'm all for that I'm a big believer in telling the audience how you did your work but you're you're asking a different question it's actually a little more of a sophisticated question than sourcing you're talking about method and research method and all I'll say here is because we are being recorded we're on TV is that one of the things that I do at the very very beginning and that's what you ask how do you start is I spend easily six months at the very beginning of any project Tim knows this because we've done this before together but I build a timeline of the subject's life so the subject could be a company it could be a team like the Patriots or it could be a person like LeBron but I build a timeline and it's it really detailed and when I'm building timeline that's like building the foundation of a skyscraper you got to go deep deep in the ground you got to dig a deep deep hole and you got to pour eight tons and tons of cement to hold up a very tall building the timeline is that it's digging an enormously deep hole and then filling it with a lot of cement that will support The Story You're Going to build and there is nothing glamorous about doing that but if you love research and I love research I love studying someone's life finding out things that no one knows I love reading I can tell you that if it was written about LeBron no matter how poorly It Was Written how badly it was done how boring it was I read it and I have the library to prove it and I read every story that I think I read every story the Akron Beacon Journal ever wrote about him starting with the one paragraph story when he was his first peewee football game and he scored touchdowns and ran wild all the way up to now and that's the beginning of my process it's like when once you have a timeline of the subject's life that's when it enables you to then get up really high in the air like over a forest and look down and say okay that tree right there I need to put a lot of light on that tree this bush over here not going to do much with that but then this tree over here big time I might actually write two whole chapters about this one week in his life but this season in Cleveland I might skip that whole season and do it in a paragraph but you can't figure that out if you don't have for me at least I can't figure that out if I don't have that immersive extensive timeline my LeBron timeline was I mean it was half as long as a book when I was done with it like literally like if I showed you the word document you'd say that's almost a book it is and in a sense it becomes the skeletal framework of a book and so I I can see like I when I'm done with that I have my roadmap I know where I'm going and now it's just knowing okay I'm going here here I'm not going to tell you how I go after that but those are State Secrets thank you that's a great question it is and on that note I I think we're out of time unfortunately Jeff but please wait to thank you all someone punch again for coming out and Jeff thank you it's a wonderful book LeBron go buy it um it's awesome and thank you so much again Jeff thank you thanks Tim thanks Tim so copies

Channel: Politics and Prose

Views: 636

Keywords: books, book, politics and prose, bookstore, author, author talk, author video, book talk, new books, book store, indie bookstore, independent bookstore, book tube, booktube, reading vlog, annotating books, book annotations, reading vlogs, journalism, journalist, Washington DC, DC, bookworms, bookworm, book worm, book worms, book chat, @politicsprose

Id: BUFHFtpaSkE

Length: 60min 25sec (3625 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 23 2023