"LeBron
James: The Making of an MVP" starts out at something of a seriousness
deficit. It’s difficult to believe that a glossy, magazine-style 156-page softcover
with 90 photographs eating up a hefty chunk of real estate will provide what
advance materials claim is the "definitive biography" of basketball’s
most transcendent star. To their credit, co-authors Terry Pluto and Brian Windhorst
of the Cleveland Plain Dealer (who also collaborated on 2007’s "The
Franchise: LeBron James and the Remaking of the Cleveland Cavaliers") do their level best to
bridge the gap.

Pluto
(writer of the ABA bible "Loose
Balls"
and a columnist twice nominated for the Pulitzer Prize) and Windhorst (the
P-D’s Cavs beat writer and one of the league’s most respected reporters) draw
off interviews with James’ high school friends, teachers, coaches, and NBA and
USA Basketball front-office personnel — as well as more than a decade of
reporting on James stretching back to his freshman year at Akron’s St.
Vincent-St. Mary High School — to make sure that a sharply drawn portrait of
LeBron-as-person underpins the chronology of his ascent. (Feel free to judge
for yourself how successful they are; seven
of
the
22
chapters
are
available
online.)

Each
chapter explores what the authors believe to be a key piece of James’ athletic
and personal evolution into the kind of ubiquitous entity that can become the
NBA’s Most Valuable Player. Some, like the sections on James’ three-year
high-school football career and his efforts to improve his free-throw shooting,
are relatively mundane. Others provide big-picture insight into James’
carefully constructed public image; multiple chapters are devoted to the growth
of James’ media savvy, his lucrative side gig as a sought-after pitchman and
how influenced he was by Michael Jordan’s smooth, smiling omnipresence.

More personally
illuminating are the book’s early chapters, which chart James’ turbulent early
life as the son of a struggling, teenaged single mother. Chapter 2, titled
"Fitting In," details LeBron’s youthful search for order amid chaos
and the time he spent living with the Walkers, a loving and respected family
that provided a stabilizing influence and made him feel accepted, which Pluto
and Windhorst say still pays dividends, on the court as well as off.

"It’s
not uncommon for children from single-parent homes to gravitate to larger
families, especially if they are made to feel accepted. LeBron did; it was
natural for him to blend in," they write. "You can see it in his
professional life as he works to make new Cleveland Cavaliers teammates feel
comfortable — and enjoys mentoring rookies. He seems to remember what it was
like to feel like an outsider and to need support from others."

Throughout
the tale of James’ growth from grade schooler to global icon, Pluto and
Windhorst accentuate the King’s positives. They cite the "part of LeBron
James’s(notes) personality that makes him want to please, to be a good person, to make
his family, friends and hometown proud." They relate the "story
seldom told" of his classroom success (he made the honor roll at St. V as
a senior, graduating with a B average) and his solid scholastic citizenship
("… he was only in trouble a few times for ‘yelling in the hallway,’
according to Headmaster David Rathz").

At times,
the praise borders on overprotective. In the "Media Savvy" chapter,
Pluto and Windhorst deflect the well-publicized criticism of James following
his deafening silence after the Cavs’ 2009 Eastern Conference Finals loss to
the Orlando Magic, calling the behavior "unusual for LeBron" and
claiming that the "real story is how few times he has made major media
mistakes, which is remarkable when you consider that he has been in the public
eye since the age of 15."

Later in
the chapter, they take ESPN the Magazine Senior Writer Tom Friend to task for
writing what they call "the first negative story on LeBron," a Mag
piece published during James’ senior year of high school that shed light on
some of his mother Gloria’s personal problems. (Which story they’re referencing
remains unclear; Friend wrote three stories about
LeBron in late 2002, none particularly flattering to Gloria James.)

"People
in the local media knew that Gloria James had had a lot of struggles in her
life, but saw no reason to write about it," Pluto and Windhorst write.
"Why embarrass LeBron because of some poor decisions made by his
mother?"

On one
hand, that’s a fair point. On the other, calling out Friend nearly eight years
after the fact and making sure to note that "the local media" —
read: hometown journalists like Pluto and Windhorst — stayed above the fray comes
off as holier-than-thou. It smacks of petty score-settling, and it adds little
to the book.

While the
numerous interviews, detailed statistics and in-depth breakdowns of James’ on-
and off-court life speak to the quality of the authors’ reporting, some elements
of the book definitely feel rushed or unnecessary. Some of the "LeBron
File" info-boxes included throughout the book provide cool tidbits (like
the fact that only James, Dave Cowens, Scottie Pippen and Kevin Garnett(notes) have
led their teams in total points, rebounds, assists, blocks and steals in a
season), others read like filler designed solely to break up text-heavy pages.
How exactly does knowing that "Before games, LeBron often eats fruit in
the locker room, but sometimes he likes to eat chicken fingers" contribute
to our understanding of what made him an MVP?

Several
literary devices, turns of phrase and stories appear more than once (most
notably, former Cavs coach Paul Silas chasing journeyman forward Ira Newble(notes) around the
locker room following a loss to the Atlanta Hawks). There are at least a
half-dozen copy-editing mistakes in the later chapters, including a photo
credit simply labeled "Name Goes Here" that you just know has someone
at the publisher’s office bashing his or her head against a desk. Likewise
egregious: The first name of DeSagana Diop(notes) and last name of J.R. Bremer, James’
former Cavs teammates, are misspelled in Ch. 9.

Individually,
these are minor points, but if you put enough of them together, a book starts
to feel sloppy, and poor presentation unfortunately starts to draw attention
away from quality reporting. All told, "LeBron James: The Making of an MVP" definitely serves a
purpose as a quick and visually appealing summation of James’ career to date.
But if in 10 or 15 years, we look back on it as the definitive James biography,
the basketball-covering community will have a hell of a lot of explaining to
do.

Read full article…

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