Transcript of LAF PRESENTS THE STEP BACK - The Chosen One (feat. Sonny Vaccaro) New

Dan, what is this relic that you're holding in your hands? Describe what you're holding.

I'm looking right now at Pudge Rodriguez's statue that he used to have on his front lawn of himself. It's ridiculous, but it's an artifact, an heirloom from a different time when people would read. I don't even know where you'd get this now, but it's LeBron cover. And it is crazy to think that this was all preordained, that everyone knew this was gonna happen by putting a 17-year-old on the COVID Dan, I'm gonna help you get into that frame of mind.

So it's February 2002. This part might not help. The Patriots had just won the Super Bowl.

Super Bowl 36.

Unbelievable.

That could be at any time. Could be at any time in this century. On top of the Billboard charts, Ja Rule and Ashanti, Always on Time. Right behind them, Nickelback. Nice. Nickelback, How You Remind Me.

So a long time ago.

Been a long time ago.

Different time.

Do you, Dan, now that I've painted the picture, do you remember where you were or your thoughts when you saw that initially?

Okay, I'm looking at this now. I'm looking at the headline now, and you tell me what I'm supposed to think when this is a headline on a story about a 17-year-old that's in a national magazine. Ohio high school junior LeBron James is so good that he's already being mentioned as the heir to Air Jordan. Get the fuck out of here. You can't write that headline about a 17-year-old and take it seriously.

I'm tired of this man being celebrated.

For what?

This is The Step Back.

James drives, steps back, puts up a 3.

Bang! LeBron James from downtown.

The Cleveland Cavaliers select LeBron James.

LeBron, what's your decision?

I made a difficult decision, but I understood what my future was about.

I believe our president is trying to divide us.

My first response was, "You bamba." Welcome to episode 1. I was on the COVID of Sports Illustrated.

The chosen one.

At that moment, around 17, I knew I could be LeBron.

Okay, guys. Well, I kind of want to explain to the audience what we're doing here, right? This is The Step Back. It's a limited series, and every season we're going to focus on a single topic.

All I heard was limited there, that this is a limited series, that the series is filled with limitations.

Oh, that's—

I would say we're doing this because this is the most recognizable the most famous transcendent athlete of, I'm gonna say, a generation, but it's probably two if you count generations as 20 to 25 years.

He's the Paul Bunyan of the NBA, right? And for the three of us, we're old enough where we all experienced it real time. But if you're in your 20s or even your early 30s, some of this stuff must sound bizarre. The idea that a literal child could be on the COVID of the biggest publication in sports in the world. And called the Chosen One. And somehow, they undershot how good he was.

Right.

When you have that kind of career, and a career that spans not only excellence on the court, but also dalliances in entertainment, dalliances in entrepreneurship and ownership, and then, of course, social activism. All of those things connecting.

It's kind of amazing when you think of impossible hype, exceeded every expectation. Also not enough. That's a hard one to pull off.

And it's still happening. That's the intriguing part. It's not like we're telling some story that we know how it wraps up.

Which means this shouldn't be a limited series. We should have a season 2.

Yeah, yeah. Keep it going, right?

Unlimited series.

So let's go. The unlimited series. And for each episode of this unlimited series, I'm going to give you guys— and this is maybe where you wanted to keep it limited— homework. Okay? You're going to get some homework. The audience is going to get some homework.

Oh, you ruined it.

And then we'll talk about it. We'll have actual experts, not just us, even though I think I think Amin might be the most expert of all of us at who made those moments actually happen. They're gonna be with us and take us back through time.

I'm more of a LeBron expert than you are. I'm more!

We'll do a scorecard at the end.

Look at the corner, the very bottom right-hand corner there, and it tells you the AOL a keyword search for Sports Illustrated. That's the equivalent of today you getting a book or a magazine and it telling you what to Google to find the magazine. It's like, that's kind of odd. But back then when this article came out, 3.2 million issues a week. I mean, that's ridiculous. It's about a third of that now. Do you remember it? Do you like, where were you when it came out?

I was, I think, working for the Atlanta Hawks part-time.

I was— You worked for the Hawks?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I did not know that. It was a part-time job. I, that time I was doing like game operations, which is a little contest that they do in the arena. And at the same time, I have a cousin who is roughly the same age as LeBron and had played against him, I think in IS-8 or one of those high school tournaments and wasn't impressed.

That was my favorite part. Of course.

Like, he's all right.

Like, okay. I was covering the Miami Heat at the time, I believe for the Palm Beach Post. It was just before I got to the Miami Herald. And this concept of, Oh, this magazine is going to tell me who the future is?

So I do remember something else from that cover. I remember thinking they said the same thing about Felipe López.

Exactly.

That Felipe López, growing up in New York, Felipe López was God.

No, it's the same thing. It was the same. It wasn't the same picture of Felipe López, but it was the same sort of joy for basketball that they were putting on their cover. Like, you won't believe this kid that's going to St. John's. He's better than anyone who's ever done it.

Yes.

—And it was actually lampooned. I don't know what the exact word is, but Spike Lee in "He Got Game" did the same thing. In the fictional universe, Jesus Shuttlesworth was on the COVID of Sports Illustrated. But that was kind of an ode to Felipe López, who had that kind of mythical reputation at the time. And so when LeBron James comes on the COVID it was two things. One, it's like, OK, here we go again. And second of all, you're telling me that the greatest player of the next generation is in Ohio? No chance.

Well, but Izzy, here's the thing though. I'm not kidding you when I tell you of this cover, and Sports Illustrated made me gun-shy in this regard. I thought of Sid Finch, the character that Sports Illustrated fictionalized as someone who threw 140 miles an hour with a single boot on one leg, and you never saw his foot, and the first 23 letters of the article spelled out Happy April Fools' Day. Like the first word. Like, I thought— I'm looking at this magazine like, what do you mean someone from Ohio as a junior is going to declare for the draft as a junior, and you're going to tell me this person is as good as Michael Jordan? And then just to look at it in retrospect and be like, wait a minute, not only was it not fiction, it was all right and true.

Yeah. And that's what got me about this one in particular, because we were already in an era where people were telling you, be careful who you compare these high school players to. Harold Miner. Came out as Baby Jordan. Um, Shea Cotton. Oh, from California. Cotton was on Sports Illustrated.

Those California people still talk about him with bated breath.

And so it just makes you wonder, how did everybody know? Because when you read these quotes, when you listen to what they've said about him in the past, they know. It was 100%. They're saying, this guy is going to be it. Danny Ainge was quoted as saying, we would draft him number 1 right now as a junior. I like Jay Williams. I like that Chinese guy over there. He didn't even say his name, Yao Ming. But I would draft this guy first.

My mentor, David Griffin, at the time, he was working his way up through the Suns front office. And he ran into Danny Ainge going to a game to watch LeBron James. And he said, Danny, literally 5 minutes into the game, closes notebook, gets up, all right, we're leaving. Yes. Because they carpooled together. And Griffin's saying, wait, what do you mean? Like, the game just started. He's like, Name me 5 guys that you wouldn't trade right now for the right to have that kid. And he was a junior in high school at the time. And again, the crazy thing isn't that they were right. Everyone was right. Actually, we were wrong. We undersold how good the guy was. Yeah. He lived up to every single expectation and surpassed it by a lot.

It's crazy to think of someone exceeding expectations when the headline is "The Chosen One," and he's a junior in high school, and he's 17 years old, and—

Now, Izzy, remind me. Had this cover come out before or after the ABCD Camp showdown with Lenny Cook? After. Because to me, that was the first time I remember hearing about it.

LeBron James is simply the greatest 15, 16-year-old kid I've ever seen in my life.

At this point, that's the moment where he became a national phenomenon.

He has a chance when it's all over to be one of the greatest players ever to play the game.

That's what sort of was the motivation for the article.

Got it. Right. So for those that don't know, the best high school players in the country every summer would gather in Teaneck, New Jersey. And no one knew who LeBron James was. Everyone knew Lenny Cook. He was the best player in the country. And the camp always ends with an all-star game. And LeBron basically destroyed Lenny Cook. And Lenny Cook's career and life took a downward spiral and LeBron became this huge platform, and I guess culminating with this magazine cover. But that was the first time I remember hearing about him.

His whole life changed after this magazine article, 'cause he was, no matter how famous he was in Akron, he was still a 17-year-old that was not known nationally. And he has this magazine cover tattooed on his back, correct?

He has "Chosen One" tattooed on his back, and it's the numeral one, not the spelling of the number one.

But that came from Grant Wahl. Our friend Grant Wahl wrote this article, the late Grant Wahl, Grant Wall and the chosen one. He didn't become the chosen one until it was on this headline on this magazine. But also beyond that, when you talk about the power of the magazine at the time and the ridiculousness of 3 million people in America learning who you are, this picture is something that introduced us to 20 years of basketball after that. And the conversation around this at the time was, should you put a 17-year-old on the COVID of a magazine Is that irresponsible because he's not a professional? I just wanna come here and play hard.

It really doesn't matter if I'm the best player in the camp.

You know, I still know what I can do.

So that is a great turning point here because another person who saw LeBron James there at that ABCD camp was Grant Wall. He pitched this story to his SI editors, and it was that concern that Dan just mentioned. It was, hey, how can we put this much pressure on this young gentleman.

And we actually talked to one of them, Greg Kelly, and he talked about how they were reluctant at first to even do the story and certainly to put it on the COVID You know, we'd had some bad experiences in the past with putting Felipe López on the COVID before he'd ever played a game, and his career didn't work out all that great.

And so Grant talked his editors into doing it. He ended up not only doing the story, but getting it put on the COVID I'm guessing it must have been a bit of a slow news week.

That's probably the first week of the Olympics, which is— there's not that much going on. So I think, yeah, I think a good high school basketball phenom was better than snowboarders. You know, we were kind of looking for the next Michael Jordan. You know, the kicker to the story was that LeBron had a mocked-up cover of Sports Illustrated himself that said, "Is he the next Michael Jordan?" You know, in retrospect, I think it was just something out of my Catholic upbringing that this was the second coming. And so he's the chosen one, more that than Star Wars or something. I never anticipated he would have it tattooed across his back and, uh, I don't know, 44-point type. All right.

There's a bunch of movie references I'm about to unload on all you guys. Number one, Anakin Skywalker was the chosen one.

You must see it. Hmm.

Clouded this boy's future is. It was prophesied this guy would come along and bring balance to the Force. I'm gonna trust you on this. Number 2, he's not wrong about the search for the next Michael Jordan. You guys remember Searching for Bobby Fischer, right? That movie? And it was about like, who's gonna be the next great chess phenom? And it turns out to be some kid or whatever. Look, starting in '93, the idea that, okay, who's gonna be next? Because Jordan has retired. And Grant Hill for a little bit, and Penny Hardaway for a little bit, and Kobe Bryant for a little bit. And Tracy McGrady, and there were all of these guys that everyone got hyped up like, "Okay, here we go. Vince Carter, this is the next Michael Jordan." And none of them quite lived up to that moniker, right? And then the third movie reference, and you guys are gonna love this one, right? When he talks about his Catholic upbringing, made me think of He Got Game. It was Ray Allen as Jesus Shuttlesworth with a crown of thorns and a crucifix.

I do remember that, yes.

Dan, you saw a young A-Rod, right, in high school. Did you have those kind of vibes?

No, no. That was not anything like what this was, even though everyone knew he'd be good because of the body type, language, the swing. I just don't know how you do these measurements in basketball. Like, I'm— Amin is somebody who studies, measures how good these people are. There has never been anybody that's not 7'4" that you can make this kind of projection on at 17 years old. Can you guys imagine when he asked me about A-Rod? Just imagine, because I did see that and it became obvious, like he got to the big leagues at 19 or 20 or whatever and looked like a grown man physically. But imagine the absurdity of putting on the COVID a 17-year-old baseball player and saying the next Babe Ruth. One of the things that you guys said that was interesting about this article, it really does feel like Grantland Rice, the original famous sportswriter who wrote about the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. It feels like you are looking at LeBron James's life through the eyes of an old-timey reporter from another time, right before the entire machine changes everything. Like, like that you're getting a glimpse of while he's meeting Michael Jordan in the opening paragraph of the story.

This is how the torch gets passed, and we can all watch it right before everything changes before our eyes over the net. Like, the coolest thing about this article is that during a slow news time They got everything right by just taking the high school kid and saying, "We shouldn't go with a snowboarder this week." Well, this article begins with an exchange between Michael Jordan and LeBron James.

But Grant compared that to the photo, if people remember, of JFK shaking hands with a young Bill Clinton. Yeah. And how prescient it seemed to be, like, this man is the next coming, will lead, whether it be NBA or the country. I thought that that was so perfect. When you see Michael Jordan come up to the 17-year-old and say, "Hey, how's mom?" And you see that Michael Jordan clearly, for whatever reason, is giving this guy attention and believes in whatever he is. I've written a ton of stories. I've never had a lead just show up to me just like that so perfectly.

Well, it is, you know, some form, as ridiculous as I may sound saying this, there is an anointing in game recognizing game because it should be LeBron being awed to be in the presence in the presence of Michael Jordan. Like, through the prism, Grant Wall as a Meadowlark colleague, being at the very start of his career, very start of his career, an accomplished career, to be watching what is the future, what you now can see as the future unfolding before it has actually happened, that is a cool part of the story to see. And the scene that Grant Wall is setting for you is like, "Oh, look, the king." Michael is paying his respect to something he sees that is that obvious. And that king is used to genuflecting at every turn from others. So the idea that the lead of this story is how are these two being treated as peers? This is why I'm telling you that when I read it, I thought it was the Syd Finch article because I'm like, this is a moment that a writer is witnessing that he is making into a moment that it's not allowed to be.

Cool note from the actual exchange that they had. That was of course Washington Wizard Michael Jordan. Yes. And he had just hit a game winner against the Cleveland Cavaliers. Here we go with 1:06:10 left.

Wizards need the bucket for the win. Jordan, the jumper. Got it. You got it at the buzzer. Jordan does it to Cleveland again.

Those guys in that car with Grant Wall on the way to that Wizards game in a 1-hour car ride. With LeBron and his friends. You know, LeBron is sitting there with the aux, you know, he's, he's playing Jay-Z.

This is just the last look that you get at LeBron before his life totally changes, because he's riding around with a writer who would be granted this access by a 17-year-old kid who just wants to be a little bit cool.

And here's the other part, he's excited about the idea that he's going to be on the SI cover. Well, there's a quick story about how we got this cover, which I think is kind of very LeBron. We actually spoke to a guy who shot the COVID His name was Mike Lebrek. And LeBron's mother, Gloria, was involved in this too, because Mike was shooting some other players at this ABCD camp, and Gloria just started asking him questions.

His mom mentioned to me, "What you got going on over here?" I was like, "I'm taking pictures of the kids as they come off." And she goes, "Oh, you gotta get my son." I'm like, "Aight, well, bring him on," you know? So Gloria brought LeBron over to me and we did some shots. Fast forward after that whole, you know, weekend, I brought the film back to Sports Illustrated.

And eventually they said, "Hey, okay, you can shoot LeBron." And they went and shot LeBron at St. Vincent-St. Mary's in their locker room.

I mean, this kid rolled in 8 o'clock in the morning. I also set up a black piece of cloth on the wall, and that's where he was posing. That wind up being the COVID shot there. But he went to a Catholic school, as we all know, and they had like a cathedral, and I did shots of him with the stained glass behind him. And then I also did shots of him dunking. I had him dunk literally— and I feel guilty about this now, it's a young kid— literally almost 30 times. And he did have practice later on that day.

He'd have 10 more years if he hadn't dunked 30 times that day, 25 years ago.

Did you think that this would be the COVID that came out of everything that he just described?

The stained glass, I thought, would've been the one, right? That would've been the one. But in retrospect, this is such a great shot. And, you know, he also talks about choosing the color of the ball, choosing that color because he thought it would pop more. Hmm. And it's so funny because I never thought about what color the ball was. If you had asked me, "Hey, what color was the ball?" What color was the ball that was on the COVID of Sports Illustrated for that LeBron cover? Couldn't tell you. I would really—

it didn't stand out.

The idea that that guy made LeBron James dunk 30 times in a gym when LeBron James was 17 years old, and that now he would still be taking alley-oops from half court in the league. I don't know what you guys think is the craziest part of this story. There are many crazy parts, but the fact that he is still doing it, averaging 20+ points a game.

It's up there. Yes, it's up there. A little bit behind he has a child who's also in the NBA. That too. And he's better than that child, by the way. You talk about Barry Bonds and Bobby Bonds. You can talk about Ken Griffey. Like, the fact that, like, "Oh, Dad is still way better." Still great.

Way better than him. I hadn't even thought of that. Like, on Highly Questionable, we talk to so many athletes about when it is that they stop playing their son, their teenage sons. And they're like, "Yeah, the first time he beat me, we never played again." The idea that Bronny's in the NBA and still can't beat his dad? LeBron's never gonna have to quit against Bronny. LeBron's gonna be 54 years old, grandfather to Bronny's children, and still busting his son's ass.

Hey Sonny, can you hear me now?

Yes, I can. I can hear very—

now we can hear you too.

How are you, sir? I'm fine, thank you.

Awesome. You're here with me, Israel. Uh, we have Amin Elhassan and Dan Levitard.

Okay, I'm Sonny. It's been a long time, Dan, since we had talked, that's for sure. And, uh, this is an interesting chapter in all of our lives, right? Who would have thought all those years would have passed and, and here we are and he's still going.

Isn't it amazing? That's wild. And now we're joined by a legend of the shoe game, Sonny Vaccaro. He was at Nike where he signed Michael Jordan. You might remember seeing Matt Damon play him in the movie Air. He was at Adidas where he almost landed LeBron James. He was also at Reebok. He's the author of Legends and Soles: The Memoir of an American Original. That's Soles, S-O-L-E-S, of course. Sonny, thank you for talking to us here. Sonny, there's a scene in your book from, uh, the famed ABCD Gamp in the summer of 2001, where you see LeBron change out of these oversized shorts that seemed to, like, be slowing him down.

That happened just like that. And his coach, who was coaching— his high school coach at that time, you know, told him he had to tighten those pants up. God, you know, we got a guy watching you up there interested in giving you a lot of money. That happened.

You watched him for 15 minutes, and then you knew immediately that you wanted to sign him to a lifetime deal to Adidas. And then you got on a plane, and it was a thunderstorm, and you thought to yourself, oh my God, I just saw the greatest high school player I've I've ever seen, and I'm not going to be able to live to tell about it. I did say that.

Worst plane ride Pam and I ever had. Uh, and it will never leave my psyche as long as I have a mind, that's for sure.

I'm going to read a quote from you in the SI story where you said, this is going to be like a Shakespearean drama. Basically, only two people are involved: me or Michael, Adidas or Nike. What else was there in terms of the recruiting other than just the dollar amount?

I, I followed him. I didn't miss a game if it was. There was one game where Phil Knight showed up too to sit on the other side of the floor in Los Angeles. So it got to be the personal recruiting of LeBron James. I was closer to the family than anyone that, you know, sometimes they change history or people for it. And that's fine. But you can't take away the time I spent with Gloria and Eddie. I mean, uh, they were in my home.

Just to clarify, Eddie Jackson is the father figure that LeBron grew up with that you're speaking of there. Yeah.

Eddie, Eddie was, you know, in his world that he lived in, he was a little bit different, you know, but he was the guy that was running the show at that time. We could have forced him to do anything. I would have held my honor with these players. And I'm not trying to be nice to your public listening guys. It's just true. I never lied. You know, what the hell is good aligned? Okay. And then I'm going to have to lie to another guy. So I believe that he would have gone over it. I don't know if it would have been a bidding contest or whatever, or we would just shut it down. I have no idea what Adidas would have done, but we never had a chance to do it.

What do you remember about when this SI cover came out? Did it actually, like, drive up LeBron's price in negotiations there?

Nothing could have driven it up. But what it did was a stable exactly what the public had heard about because at that time Sports Illustrated cover was one of the most important things you could do if you were an athlete. So let's put it that way. They're no longer in that situation. But yes, it meant a lot because everybody in the nation saw it. And I'm fortunate enough to have an autographed copy of that thing from LeBron. I mean, so I go way back getting that in the mail and all that. But that led him, that was his opening to America, yes.

Uh, Sonny, I just really don't understand how it is that it can be that obvious to you upon sight that a 17-year-old is going to be that much better than everyone else. You have a lifetime of experience evaluating these people. You know how subjective and scientific it can be and can't be. How is it possible at 17 that you would be that clear-eyed about seeing this?

I can't explain that, but it's obviously something to it. And inside of my mind, inside of my memory, the Jordan thing was the most fantastic thing that I ever can go back to. Uh, I saw him for 17 seconds. Now you can transfer this to Kobe, to LeBron, you know, to Tracy. None of these guys had I ever seen before I made that decision. I knew on all of them, but LeBron, was the easiest. Anybody else can see it once they had the opportunity. I had this great chance to do it first. I'm sure other people would've said the same thing. No one would've been as dramatic as me, gentlemen. But there is no question in my mind that, you know, at that time when I saw him to make this decision, there was no holding back. 'Cause after that is when I offered them the $100 million in their hotel room in Los Angeles. That I knew that Adidas promised me they were gonna thing. So I knew it when I left that gym in 20 minutes. And for anyone that's like thinking, who in the hell is Sonny Vaccaro? The only thing I can say, not in my defense, but in the reality of life, I've done it before.

For those who don't know, just Sonny Vaccaro, beyond being just a legend, he's also a mafioso. I mean it with the greatest of compliments. Yes, figurative mafioso, a gangster who runs over the sneaker game. I want the details, Sonny. Give us the details that put us in that room of sneaker gangster Sonny Vaccaro saying, I know who to give $100 million because I'm a gangster.

I'll never forget that room. We drove up after a high school game. I think Ohio State was playing a football game that day, so we had to make the football game. It was Gloria. And LeBron and Maverick wasn't in it. No other people were in it. And I had assurance by Adidas that they were gonna back my play there. They knew I was gonna do it. I didn't just make it up that day. I told them, we're gonna give him the biggest contract ever given. And they, they said, yes, you can. So when I went there, I was prepared. I wasn't nervous. I wasn't whatever. And the first thing I asked was, what do you think you're worth? LeBron sort of said it. Maybe around $5 million. They had a couple other ones running close. And I said, nope, I'm going to offer you $100 million. LeBron jumped. Gloria cried. So to go back to the mafia, I take it in a strange world that you put that as a compliment, but not as— I didn't have a sledgehammer ready to go to hit him, or I didn't have a gun.

I meant it as a compliment. You know, you're a gangster. I know. I agree. Gangster. We all know you're a gangster. Look, this is a different time in the sneaker game. It doesn't sound sane that Adidas okayed you Yeah, go give a high school kid $100 million.

What if I told you that's what Phil Knight told me about Michael? I'll say this for the record. When I was doing all the, all the players I ever worked, all the companies I've worked for, going back to Shawn Livingston, the sign with Reebok, and then got hired, all the people, it was my number. It was never their number. The number of Michael came up because that was our budget. But I said, you know, it all Give it all. So this is the first time someone asked me something like that. So I think it's a great compliment to, you know, whatever I was able to do. But they also gave me permission. I didn't do this by, you know, just, and then tricking them. I did this. I said, this is what I'm gonna do. That's why I quit.

Sonny, did you ever get any clarification why they changed their mind? Because in your book it says you didn't know that the number had changed until right then in the meeting with Gloria and LeBron.

I never asked them what the hell they did. Wow. I was gone. They lied to me because we knew, and everyone in that room that gave me that contract knew what was supposed to be in there. Mm-hmm. That's what I'm saying. They lied and they lied to me to lie to this kid. I didn't say that we'd get Nike. Nike's still gonna make a bid. There's no question. I doubt Phil Knight would've given up. I think he'd have given them more than $100 million, to be honest with you. He couldn't afford to lose LeBron James. Let's be honest. I had Kobe and Tracy and Jermaine O'Neal. I mean, Jermaine was a pretty damn good player too. I got out of high school. Adidas signs LeBron, the game's over. Just be logical. If we end up, those 4 names that I just gave you are iconic. Tracy's a first, a first, you know, addition when he's in the Hall of Fame coming from nowhere. Kobe's destiny was, you know, made the day he come from Italy with his family. I mean, these guys are legend legends also. And then you got this kid and you have them throughout and who knows what else happens.

I mean, uh, so no matter what, people come back and they'll have an answer for what I'm saying because you can't play out the cards. I didn't get them, but if they did happen, I just want to find somebody better than, you know, LeBron and Kobe and Tracy at that young age. Woo! I know we're on a clock, so— but that's what I'm saying. Who can tell? But if we got him—

Sonny, I'm not worried about the clock. I am worried about that magazine that's signed. You got to get that thing in a protective cover. You can't just leave that in open air.

I also have the ace of spades that Michael gave me on the 10-hour ride from Paris to back to Chicago when he paid me the debt because I won.

You beat Michael at gambling and cards or something else? What's the debt that he owed you?

We play gin for 10 hours, stop to go to the bathroom, have dinner. And I beat him. I won more. We were playing for a big number. Once it reached a certain number, we quit keeping score. And honest to God, we were landing in Chicago. And that's what he said. When the plane hit down, it would be the last hand. And the last hand came. I won. So instead of him giving me the X dollars—

Oh, that's bullshit. Wait a minute. That's bullshit. Like, how much money did he owe you?

I tell you what, I swear to God Almighty. It was a tie game. So he owed me the one, whatever we were playing for the game. It was more than a dollar, but he gave me the ace of spades. It was the ace of spades. And I got that, I got that ace of spades locked up too.

A man who could offer $100 million in a hotel room to a 17-year-old gambled with one of the most famous and exorbitantly lavish gamblers there's ever been. You beat him for a sum of money, which was Blank.

Blank. You're right. Whatever, whatever it was, it's better being a mystery. But I— but he gave me the card.

That's what's great. Well, get that card appraised and see how much that thing is worth.

Great, Sonny. The card's not worth whatever you would have won playing gin for 10 hours with Michael Jordan.

I don't know. I don't know. I kind of feel like the card might be worth more.

It's bullshit. It's bullshit. You're saying you've got a card that's priceless. I'm saying there was a price and you won't tell us what it is.

Well, I'm not going to either.

You're full of shit, Vaccaro. See, doesn't that make it more valuable if I don't tell anybody anything?

The book is Legends and Souls: The Memoir of an American Original. Sonny Vaccaro, thank you so much. Thank you, Sonny.

We're going to go one-on-one off the record someday.

Thank you, Sonny. Good seeing you. Thanks, Sonny. God bless you.

Thank you all.

One of the things about this article, I don't know if you guys notice this, maybe Izzy reads this way, but I read writing as a writer. So I see the places here where Grant Wall is a bit primitive as a writer because this is a young Grant Wall doing a story on a young LeBron James who also hasn't actually lived all that much yet because he's 17 years old. So this feels like an article that could have been written in a high school newspaper in some ways by two very talented people who happened to be in high school.

Give me an example, a specific example.

Oh, it's just Grant Wall was an exceptional writer, and this was a bit Spartan. He's not doing a lot of flowery here. He's just talking about— he's taking a snapshot of a high school— Grant Wall, by the end of his career, was a great writer. He was not yet a great writer when he wrote this story.

This is a snapshot of LeBron as a 17-year-old and Grant Wall as a young writer. He was 28.

So he wasn't— But he was pretty young in his career, though.

Yes. Yes.

There was a line where he mentioned that he had, quote, "an Iversonian street cred that Jordan himself lacked." Was he right at the time?

So that was the conjecture at the time. The idea that Jordan, corporate. Iverson, the people's champ. Right? Like he had the streets on lock. And that was described as street cred, which we see now, like, oh, that's not a great reference, street cred. Right? But I would say at the time, Irrespective of Grant's evolution as a writer, that's how people talked, man, about our sport. This wasn't like, "Oh, look at this guy writing like this." Everybody wrote like this. This article, this cover that we have here from him as a high school junior was both ridiculous, standard-setting, and at the same time, in retrospect, very sober and conservative. From what he actually became.

I would say conservative in another way too, because some of the framing of this, no biological father, aggregated cocaine trafficking, like blasting Jay-Z in the car, and also using his two-way pager. Yeah.

Dan, I wanted to ask you about sort of this idea of LeBron not really wanting to tell his history, right? Not really wanting to use his overcoming of his childhood, if you will, not necessarily Not necessarily ignoring it, but just, hey, I don't need that to be discussed when it comes to why I made it.

If he were to talk about whatever the poverty porn was in his life that actually shaped him— when he says tangentially here, I saw a lot of drugs and crime, but I'm not talking about the clichéd stuff. I'm talking about the details to his story that he has never told about how he was shaped and how it is that Grant Wall would arrive at LeBron James' street credibility. Like LeBron James does not present as Allen Iverson's story on street credibility. Grant Wall is arriving at LeBron James's life and seeing an assortment of things that come from poverty and see LeBron rising above it. Whatever the difficulties are in having a single mom and chaos in your life that makes you miss 100 days of 4th grade classes because you're moving around from apartment to apartment.

One of the things to that is— and I did not know this until rereading this article years and years later— is that LeBron's grandmother passed away only a couple years after he was born. So typically what we see is when you have young parents, their parents have a very pivotal role in the raising of the child. Well, here's Gloria James at 18 years old, alone in the world. But I go back to defend Grant Wall on this. As a 17-year-old, and this is the backstory, that is the archetype that everyone was operating off of. The NBA's become a middle-class sport. Basketball's become a middle-class sport. All these kids come from middle-class homes. But at this point in time, the early 2000s, the archetype of the NBA player is, "Has to struggle to make it," whatever. And the guys who don't fit that archetype are few and far between. And you know who one of those guys is? Michael Jordan, who came from a middle-class family. Kobe Bryant. Kobe Bryant came from an affluent family, right? But Michael Jordan, who's the comp, right? Jordan, two-parent household, parents were professionals, educated, decidedly middle-class. Allen Iverson, single mother.

Allen Iverson growing up in a very rough part of Virginia. Allen Iverson surrounding himself, like LeBron, with friends. These consiglieres that I have constitute my family. Carrying them along with me throughout. Right?

So, is it just him wanting to shape his story however he wants it told? Is there a level of embarrassment that he doesn't want to address?

Now, I think there is what he wants his Horatio Alger story to be about. And he doesn't want it to be about that particular thing.

I found it interesting though, Buzz Bissinger and a whole lot of great writers have tried to make their way into the details of this, and no one's actually achieved it. Like, I'm actually interested in, the journey that goes from, "Oh, that person's proud of being from the street, proud of representing the street." LeBron has never done that.

I wouldn't go as far as he doesn't have pride in it. I do think to myself, where he has wanted to be and has arrived as a business mogul, in those boardrooms, in those interactions, what gives me credibility? If they see me as a guy from the street, Or if they see me as a peer in this. And so it's the difference between Allen Iverson's friends being called a posse and LeBron James's friends being business moguls in their own right.

But it's purposeful though. This is what I'm saying. That's my point. Oh, this— but this part's hugely interesting. It serves him and his economy to scrub as much of the street off of him in sales. I don't know if it serves. And just say Akron. Just make it Akron instead of make it street credibility, which is what— make the story when he's talking about Horatio Alger and how do you clean this up to make it palatable to America, just make it he loves Akron. LeBron transcends street credibility, which is a pretty strong credibility to have.

I think he graduated from the streets. Yeah. I mean, the kid from Akron in itself is trademarked. Yeah. Like, that just shows you it's about business, but he is shaping the story however he wants you to see it.

But he didn't leave it behind, right? Through the school, through his various philanthropic efforts, and his standing up for social causes, He hasn't left it behind. And it goes back to the very first paragraph of this story. Who was his role model? The guy he wanted to be was Michael Jordan. And Michael Jordan was corporate excellence. That's what he was. Michael Jordan commanded and demanded respect in any boardroom, any golf course, anywhere he went. No one talked about him being a country boy from Wilmington, North Carolina. They talked about Michael Jordan as being this almost like an avatar for business dominance.

Okay, but what I'm talking about though, I mean, here, when you say he didn't leave it behind, I believe he did leave it behind. And it doesn't mean that he neglects Akron, because he doesn't, obviously. I'm saying he polished it into something different so that whomever would be put off by street credibility. Yes. Whomever that Steven Jackson and Matt Barnes and Allen Iverson put off with the coolness of street street credibility. He didn't do Republicans buy shoes too, but he did put street credibility over there, wrap it in Akron, in schools, and make it something that works in sales. Like, it's brilliant as an economic model.

There are hundreds of thousands of people who come from disadvantaged backgrounds who end up getting opportunities and privileges to go to a certain— maybe you got to go to a certain high school, and as a result, you got to go to a certain university, and you graduate, And when you walk into a room as a graduate of an Ivy League institution, right? It's not necessarily a disavowing or a distancing. It is what Izzy said. It is a graduation. Yeah, I went, I was there in my proverbial middle school of life. As did Maverick Carter. Yes. As did Rich Paul.

As did Rich Paul. Right?

And they all benefited from this in that when they walk into a room, Dan, business people, particularly white business people, people don't look at them as some guys, some riffraff, some whatever. They look at them as peers. And that starts with how you tell my story. If you constantly tell my story as one of poverty and drugs and crime and all that stuff, then that's always the prism in which these boardrooms and these business people are always going to look at me through.

Do you not think it's interesting though, Izzy, that for all the powers that this human being has shown to have over the years, that he gets to control that part of the story? I thought that we were people who were allowed to tell all the parts of the story and revisiting his past in something other than Akron schools.

How many people are actually going to go back and read the story?

No, right? No, we've wasted— no, no, we've wasted how much time today talking about a story that nobody has thought about for 20-plus years.

So I got a little bit of homework for you guys. I want you to watch an 11-minute video. I think you know what which one it is. The answer to the question everybody wants to know: LeBron, what's your decision?

It's a book club. Why is it a video? I thought you guys were going to make fun of me about the fact that I thought this actual magazine entire cover was what was tattooed on his back. I didn't think it was just the chosen one. Dan, I'm sorry, I'm embarrassed by it. I took no joy from admitting that to you guys. I just now delight in the idea of this entire cover being on LeBron James's back. Like, what a terrible idea that would be, and yet somehow not as bad as the one not fitting on his back because the tattoo artist stinks.

Including the price of the magazine and the AOL keyword Sports Illustrated.