The first of them, by about three weeks, was mine. Shortly before he made his NBA debut that fall, not one but two LeBron biographies hit bookstore shelves. A lot of that had to do with the three SLAM features, two covers and a year’s worth of Basketball Diary entries he’d already been the subject of. He was already one of the biggest stories in sports when he stepped onto the NBA draft stage 20 years ago this summer. There’s a compelling case to be made for LeBron James as the last true superstar to emerge from that mostly analog era, a time when magazine covers, SportsCenter highlights and at least one semi-authorized biography (more on that in a minute) did the work of building the legend. We built connections across the grassroots scene, we paid attention, and in a magazine created to celebrate today’s superstars, we always found space to tell you about tomorrow’s. Strictly speaking, SLAM has never discovered anyone, but we built our rep in part on introducing the game’s brightest young stars to our readers before almost anyone outside their hometowns-including our national media peers-had heard of them. Where basketball is concerned, this publication has generally been one of the exceptions. Fame was a gradual thing, and very few people ever had a chance to be in the select group known as “first.” The soon-to-be multi-platinum recording artist, the future Hall of Fame athlete and the arena-headlining comedic genius almost never got famous all at once proximity, and connections, determined who knew about them when. In the days before YouTube and any social media platform you’ve heard of, awareness of the Next Big Thing generally came in stages. looks back at what it was like to cover a 16-year-old with a future even his wildest dreams couldn’t imagine. As we celebrate the 20th anniversary of the 2003 NBA Draft, aka the year LeBron James went pro, a former SLAM Ed.
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