The next Lebron James?
Horace Spencer III
You be the judge
Linky
February 25th, 2011 at 1:05 PM ^
Beat me by that much....
February 25th, 2011 at 1:17 PM ^
Yea, but you remembered to include OT in your title. So you get a +1 from me.
February 25th, 2011 at 2:36 PM ^
Said in your best Maxwell Smart voice?
"Missed it by THAT much..."
February 25th, 2011 at 3:07 PM ^
exactly what i was going for ha ha
February 25th, 2011 at 1:07 PM ^
If he's 6'8" now then he'll probably be 6'11" or 7' by the time he's done growing. So, probably not.
February 25th, 2011 at 1:19 PM ^
I was 6'2" in 7th grade and now I am 6'3" 16 years later.
February 25th, 2011 at 4:23 PM ^
I was 5'1" in 7th grade and ended up 6'3". A lot can happen to any kid in 3-5 years.
I see your point eye to eye sir! ha!
February 25th, 2011 at 1:13 PM ^
February 25th, 2011 at 1:25 PM ^
Old argument, we had a whole thread about this last night. It's good for the league.
February 25th, 2011 at 1:45 PM ^
In all due respect the "board" didn't pay a lot of money last January for Cavs season tickets prior the queen's decision. I did.
February 25th, 2011 at 2:59 PM ^
So LeBron owed it to you to come back? Sports are both competitive and a business. If the Cavs can't fill the seats it's because they have a garbage team, not because they lack stars. Portland and San Antonio have good teams with arguably no stars; they put asses in the bleachers. http://espn.go.com/nba/attendance/_/sort/homePct Look at where the Cavs rank in attendance. The Hawks have a max contract player and only fill 78% of their seats. Markets and team success are just as important as stars.
February 25th, 2011 at 2:45 PM ^
If things get to a point at which fans of small-market teams can't realistically expect their franchises to win championships (because their starts will inevitably leave for larger markets, à la European soccer), that's not good for the league. Those fans might stop following the league.
February 25th, 2011 at 3:01 PM ^
Hasn't stopped the Cavs and Warriors fans from going to games this year. Neither team can be expected to win. http://espn.go.com/nba/attendance/_/sort/homePct
February 25th, 2011 at 3:24 PM ^
I'll see your Cavs and Warriors and raise you the Timberwolves, Nets, Kings, Pistons, Wizards, Bucks, Raptors and Bobcats. How can you pull that kind of selective data and ignore the field of contrary evidence?
February 25th, 2011 at 5:44 PM ^
You expect people to go watch teams with a combined record of 158-349?
-EDIT-
Why the hell would I list the contrary evidence? That's for you to do when you disagree with everything I say in a very stuck up, arrogant way.
February 26th, 2011 at 12:37 AM ^
Curious, what was the 'wow' for? Just wondering...
February 26th, 2011 at 2:19 PM ^
You seem to be defeating your own logic and agreeing with the person you are arguing with. Also your defense of using cherry picked stats and trying to sneak them by people who can very easily find the counterpoints is weak. Not really trying to be a dick as I generally like your posts, just seemed like you were picking an argument out of something that was originally probably meant tongue in cheek.
February 26th, 2011 at 3:07 PM ^
Not trying to be defensive or anything, but there's nothing tongue in chek about what he's said on this whole thread. However, you guys want more evidence so here it is. The last time before the past few months that the NBA saw a bunch of stars come together was the collection of the Boston Three Party. Minnesota ranked 20th in attendance percentage the year before Garnett was traded as well as the year after. Seattle fell a few slots when Allen left, but there was writing on the wall in that city that the team was on the way out. Grizzlies attendance statistics were similary static the year after Gasol was traded for half of a turkey sandwich. To validate my point about putting a solid team on the floor and having people come to games; the Grizzlies are a playoff contender for the first time in a while this year. Attendance in Memphis is up 4% from last year. Go to work at finding holes in my logic, and once again I will fill those holes.
February 25th, 2011 at 3:27 PM ^
But those are paid attendance figures, and as Mgrowold's post demonstrates, Cleveland fans were forced to choose whether or not to renew their season tickets well before LeBron made his decision. I bet Cleveland's renewal rates will be a lot worse for nextseason.
Why do you consider Golden State a small market? They're the only team in the Bay Area, which has like 8 million people.
February 25th, 2011 at 8:54 PM ^
February 25th, 2011 at 1:25 PM ^
I figured he meant the next Lebron James, so, ya know, physical freak who has fewer championship rings than Darko or Adam Morrison
February 25th, 2011 at 1:14 PM ^
nice, classy move by the AAU coach not to put too much pressure on a 13-year old kid.
I think in four years his nickname will be 'LeBron Who?'" said Rick Barrett, Spencer's coach for the South Jersey Gymrats of the Amateur Athletic Union.
February 25th, 2011 at 1:19 PM ^
February 25th, 2011 at 1:20 PM ^
Meh. He's tall for his age and pretty athletic. Wake me up in a few years when the kids he's playing against have gone through a bit o' puberty.
February 25th, 2011 at 5:16 PM ^
Couldn't agree more. He is, admittedly, quite athletic and coordinated for a skinny, 6'8 middle schooler, but when you are that much bigger than the kids you are playing against you are going to dominate. If he plays varsity at a D-1 high school as a freshman, I would be surprised if he made much noise.
February 25th, 2011 at 1:23 PM ^
After reading George Dohrmann's excellent Play Their Hearts Out, I am an ardent supporter of retiring the phrase "The Next LeBron." There are way too many sharks in the world of amateur basketball to put that sort of expectations on a middle schooler and have it turn out well.
February 25th, 2011 at 1:30 PM ^
The last "next Lebron" didn't pan out, but his AAU coaches sure made their name and money off him.
It's a great book, by the way.
February 26th, 2011 at 12:12 AM ^
the next Jordan, maybe still is. I think people have finally moved on and realized there will never be another Jordan.
February 25th, 2011 at 1:23 PM ^
so I'd have to say no.
February 25th, 2011 at 1:27 PM ^
how can you even begin to compare this kid to lebron? is he 270lbs of muscle, with the handle and quickness of a pg and has a 40+inch verticle? maybe he's really bad at basketball and is just a freakishly tall 8th grader.
there are a lot of tall athletic players in the nba that arent lebron or dwight (see anthony randolph).
February 26th, 2011 at 12:14 AM ^
Kevin Durant, possibly the best offensive player in the league.
February 25th, 2011 at 1:26 PM ^
Back during the 90s, I was a sports writer who covered recruiting. In 1990, a friend tipped me off to catch a Kinston High School game. "They've got a sophomore who could start in the ACC right now!" That was the first time I saw Jerry Stackhouse.
A few years later, I saw Schea Cotton as a high school freshman. People were talking about how he was going to be the next Michael Jordan. OJ Mayo was supposed to be ridiculously good too.
Somewhere, deep in my own personal archives, I have a Sports Illustrated college basketball preview from either 1986 or 1987. It lists the top basketball players for each class going out something like 12 years. They tabbed Marcus Liberty as the top senior in the current class. I remember Kenny Anderson being tabbed as the top sophomore. The top eighth grader (I think) was Jimmy King. Damon Bailey was the tops for his class.
A lot of times, you'll get guys that peak physically at a very early age. And when it happens, they dominate everyone else around them. Eventually, everyone else catches up.
The flipside is true as well. David Robinson was 6-6 when he enrolled at the Naval Academy. Tom Gugliotta was 6-6 and about 190 pounds when he started college.
February 25th, 2011 at 1:27 PM ^
This kind of hype is why basketball is so damn sleazy in the first place.
February 25th, 2011 at 1:31 PM ^
Good thing football and baseball don't have these problems...
http://sports.espn.go.com/los-angeles/ncf/news/story?id=4888515
February 25th, 2011 at 1:44 PM ^
Spare me. Bryce Harper was at least a high school upperclassman at the time, and no, I don't exactly think the whole David Sills thing is any better. But don't insult my intelligence by pretending this is routine in football or baseball. Basketball is the only sport where this is commonplace. This shit happens all the time in hoops.
February 25th, 2011 at 1:54 PM ^
If you count Yahoo, who apparently never realizes there's actual news to put on their front page, then sure it happens alot. Legitimate sports outlets only report this stuff when it's a sure thing. It's just the way sports media works these days. High school signing day gets full-day coverage, high school games are televised nationally, prospects are discovered and touted. Happens in all sports, even soccer with Freddy Adu.
EDIT
Football may not be like this, because it requires a fully developed body; but "prodigies" are just as prominent in baseball as in basketball.
February 25th, 2011 at 2:09 PM ^
You keep talking about high school. This kid is in middle school. And yeah, guess what: televising high school games is also the kind of hype that helps attract the sleaze.
And oh yeah, Freddy Adu, what a great comparison. A 16-year-old, suspended by his professional team for bitching about playing time. If you think that's the kind of model the NBA should turn into, your opinion on sports needs to be buried. "It's OK because Freddy Adu" is the absolute worst argument you could have made. Because he's turned into quite the superstar. Scored all those goals in the World Cup, you know.
February 25th, 2011 at 2:18 PM ^
You've completely lost touch with what the argument is about. You referred to basketball being sleazy because players get hype at a young age. I've showed you that it's not just a basketball thing. I also never said anything about thinking this hype was a good idea. Sports are supposed to be fun, especially in junior high and high school. On the other hand, if ESPN and SI were to not pay any attention to a LeBron or Bryce Harper as teenagers, they aren't doing their job of reporting on the important aspects of the future of the sports we all love.
February 25th, 2011 at 2:35 PM ^
No, you haven't showed me it's not just a basketball thing. You've showed me isolated instances, one each from other sports. You've taken anecdotes to their extreme and tried to claim it means that other sports have exactly the same problem as basketball. "There is a baseball player who got hyped in high school" is not the same thing as what goes on in basketball. I will tell you what: you show me multiple instances of baseball players that had sleazeball AAU programs offering their fathers jobs just so their kid will play for them. If this is the Amateur Athletic Union, what makes them so desperate to have this kid? It ain't love of the game.
That stuff is widespread in basketball. It does not happen in baseball. It might happen on occasion in football. It happens in soccer, sort of, but the system is a totally, totally different structure and not relatable. This sentence?
The 13-year-old has played the game for fewer than three years, and is already being bombarded with recruiting phone calls throughout the night and AAU programs offering his father a choice of high-paying jobs to get him to move and play for their program.
Sleaze. Pure sleaze. If you can't see anything wrong with that, you've got a problem. If you think this is commonplace in other sports, you're wrong. Period.
February 25th, 2011 at 2:45 PM ^
The hype is the issue you mentioned, not his father getting job offers. I'm not an idiot; of course that's a problem. To say basketball is corrupt because this happens when the kids are 14 instead of 17 or 18 like in football is stupid. Age shouldn't matter when an amateur athlete is being exploited. You're right though, Cam Newton's dad tried to sell him to Miss. State, because of Newton's extreme dribbling and dunking ability. Reggie Bush's family got a house and cars because he dishes out a bunch of assits, I am wrong, you are right. Basketball is the only sleazy sport.
February 25th, 2011 at 3:18 PM ^
His father getting job offers is part of the hype. Hype and sleaze are not separate.
Regardless, "football's a little sleazy too" is a really poor argument for "basketball's not sleazy." Basketball is sleazy. In fact, it's the sleaziest. You can either accept that or not, but it's the truth. And this kind of thing is why. If you don't dispute that, then why did you pick a fight in the first place? Just to bring other sports into the muck with basketball?
February 25th, 2011 at 4:54 PM ^
You started the argument by saying "this wouldn't happen in football or baseball," or something along those lines. Just admit you got completely owned and move on.
February 25th, 2011 at 7:09 PM ^
Funny, I have yet to see an example of a baseball middle-schooler being touted as the next anything.
And I never said "this wouldn't happen in football or baseball." It's not that hard to read what I did say, actually. I said it was rare in other sports and commonplace in basketball. How, exactly, is that wrong?
February 25th, 2011 at 9:41 PM ^
Plus, Adu is completely atypical. After the surprising run at the '02 World Cup, the prevailing narrative was that the US was a monster on the rise. The media went looking for the young American that was going to help us break through, because surely one was coming. They found Adu and hyped the heck out of him.
What's the difference between Adu and a guy like Andy Najar? Najar came to the US later in life and has more trouble qualifying for the national team. Adu is more or less a household name, but only soccer junkies know about guys like Najar. There is no systematic media promotion of young soccer players like there is for young basketball players. There is no systematic media promotion of young anything players like there is for young basketball players.
(And this isn't even getting into the age thing with Adu. I'm not sold on the idea that he lied on his records, but at the very least, I think we can conclude that he was a couple of years ahead of his peers in the maturation process. Singling Adu out as a typical example of anything is a losing proposition.)
February 25th, 2011 at 1:28 PM ^
Not impressed with the video, in terms of skill. If you watch LeBron at around that age he was a lot more skilled than this kid is. Ceiling seems to be high though.
February 25th, 2011 at 1:38 PM ^
If he makes a public spectacle of taking out a 10 foot machete and shoving it into the backs of an entire city while showing that he's quite possibly the most egotistical self serving asshole on the face of the earth and tries to hide it under the charade of charity......then he very well could be the next Lebron James.
February 25th, 2011 at 1:38 PM ^
There's no way he's more of an asshole than Kanye West...