McCurdy: LeBron James more than lived up to his long ago hype

Unless you're completely unplugged and off the grid, surely you know LeBron James did a thing this week.

A guy not known as a pure scorer became the all-time leading point-getter in the NBA, passing Kareem Abdul-Jabbar on a fallaway jumper in the third quarter of a game with Oklahoma City in Los Angeles on Tuesday.

No one could have predicted that's how it would play out in 2000. How could they?

That season as a skinny freshman he helped Akron St. Vincent-St. Mary to the state championship. He put up 19 points, 11 rebounds and three assists in a 63-53 state semifinal win over Canal Winchester — yes, Canal Winchester and SV-SM were just Division III schools not too many years ago. A guy by the name of Maverick Carter — now James's most trusted business partner ― had 26 in that game.

The next day James put the finishing touches on a perfect season, producing 25 points on 10 of 12 shooting with nine rebounds and four assists in a 73-55 win over Greeneview, where he was mildly upstaged by the 5-foot-nothing kid off the bench ― Dru Joyce Jr. ― who went 7-for-7 on 3-pointers.

By the next season, the rest of the nation started catching up with what we already knew. LeBron James was a virtuoso of a basketball player.

As a sophomore, he went 12 of 17 from the floor to end with 29 points and seven rebounds in a 56-50 state semifinal win over Wayne Trace. To earn a back-to-back D-III state title, James put up 25 points and 10 rebounds while shooting a garish 11 of 14 from the floor as the Irish prevailed over Miami East 63-53.

By the time he was a junior, it was on. He was the most famous high school athlete in the country and the attention and scrutiny were intense.

The Irish did not win a Division II state championship his junior season. In the semifinal, they handled Poland Seminary 76-36 with James going 14 of 21 from the floor for 32 points with nine rebounds and six assists. In the championship game, Roger Bacon famously didn't fear James and Co., but he more than held up his end by again shooting 14 of 21 to score 32 points with six assists in the 71-63 loss.

By the end of his senior year, he sold out arenas around the country like a rap star, was featured on magazine covers like a fashion model, shown on television as often as Andy Griffith reruns and followed by a film crew capturing his final high school season with his pals. He was investigated after buying a Hummer and was briefly suspended by the Ohio High School Athletic Association for receiving throwback jerseys.

Still, he overcame the distractions and canceled out the noise and simply produced in the biggest moments, whether it was made-for-ESPN matchups in prime time or in going for a third state championship. In the state semifinals, he put up a cool 19-9-6-3 stat line in a 71-46 win over Canton South, then came through like never before in a tight title game against Kettering Alter, scoring 25 of their 40 points and grabbing half of the team's 22 rebounds to claim a 4-point victory.

That spring he was drafted No. 1 by the Cleveland Cavaliers, and the rest, as they say, is history.

And that's a lot of history, Tuesday night being the latest in a career of history-making highlights.

LeBron James is a polarizing figure in America and always a prime topic for debate. Members of the media have made careers chronicling and discussing his every move and whim. No modern athlete has induced more hot takes than James.

But no matter your opinion of him as a player or a person, this should be one that we all can agree.

No one in American sports has lived up to the hype better than James.

He was famously proclaimed the "Chosen One" by Sports Illustrated. Newspaper stories featured him. ESPN highlights showcased him. Radio shows did segments on him. All this when he was still a teen roaming the halls at SV-SM.

The ways this could have gone sideways are endless. The pitfalls he dodged and the trappings he avoided would have snared just about anyone else — and has. Most of all, he never became satisfied and simply continued to grow, evolve and improve on the court and off it for 20 years.

How many prodigies actually live up to their young promise?

Tiger Woods came close, but bad decisions derailed large chunks of his career and left us wondering what-if in the end.

Tom Brady was no phenom. Steph Curry was a late bloomer. Mike Trout's talent has never translated into wins or more baseball fans. Alex Rodriguez killed the impact of his career with performance-enhancing drugs. Dale Earnhardt Jr. didn't win enough to capitalize on his fame in NASCAR. Jimmie Johnson won enough, but never really crossed over beyond race fans.

Soccer is growing in America, but it has yet to produce a talent the caliber of what we're talking about. The UFC has stars but no one resonates in all strata of pop culture outside the niche of mixed martial arts, at least in a positive way. Gymnasts come-and-go too quickly in the Olympic cycle to make a sustained impact in our collective consciousness.

Serena Williams and Michael Phelps — the greatest women's tennis player and the all-time best swimmer — are peers of James and can make a case that they made the most of their gifts compared to all others. And that's pretty elite company to keep.

Love him or hate him, respect him or discount him, honor him or downgrade him, one thing we can all agree on is that James got the most out of all he was given. He more than lived up to the long-ago hype.

The championships, the awards, the honors, the records, the billion-dollar portfolio, the growing personal business empire, the cross-over recognition with fans and non-fans, all of it shows that James never shortchanged himself.

Tuesday night was just another affirmation that the skinny freshman who led his team to a state championship in 2000 and who is still going strong into his sporting twilight in 2023 eclipsed even the loftiest of expectations any of us had for him.

That's what makes LeBron James special.

Rob McCurdy is a sports writer at the Marion Star and with USA Today Network-Ohio and can be reached at rmccurdy@gannett.com, 419-610-0998, Twitter @McMotorsport and Instagram @rob_mccurdy_star.

This article originally appeared on Marion Star: McCurdy: LeBron James more than lived up to his long ago hype