Twenty-three years ago, before he had ever suited up for an NBA game, Sporting News posed a question on its cover that has lived on in infamy —Is LeBron James overrated?
Our 2003 cover pops up on social media every so often and is sure to trigger a viral response every time. Over the course of his career, LeBron has gone 23-0 against us. Entering Year 24 and his first with the Sixers, it is looking like he will only add to the longest active winning streak in the league.
King James has more than lived up to his draft hype coming out of high school, breaking a plethora of records and putting forth a compelling argument as the greatest of all time. And he's still pretty good at the age of 41. While he's no longer the best player in the league, we still have him firmly in the top 25 in our top 150 starter rankings.
We've written hundreds of positive things about LeBron over the ensuing years, but that spicy headline is the one that probably gets remembered the most. With his career winding down, now is as good a time as ever to look back at how much crow we deserve to eat, along with what exactly LeBron did to make all of his doubters look bad.
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The headline that oversold the story
Here are two inside baseball tidbits about how headlines work across news.
Betteridge's law of headlines is an adage that was created in 2009 by Ian Betteridge, a British technology journalist. His observation noted that any headline which ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no. That certainly applied to our LeBron headline, "Is LeBron James overrated?"
The second thing to know about headlines is that oftentimes it's an editor rather than the writer who came up with it.
Bob Hille, who is still with Sporting News as a Senior Editorial Consultant, was a part of the headline-writing process for the story back in 2003.
"I feel bad for [writer Sean Deveney] because the cover oversold what the story was about," Hille said. "We brainstormed cover lines to be both honest and provocative to stand out on newsstands. In GOAT hindsight, we probably leaned too hard into provocative. Or put another way: Is LeBron overrated? Um, no."
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When our story came out, the LeBron hype machine had been in full force for over a year. Sports Illustrated had called him "The Chosen One" on their cover 15 months earlier, when he was still a junior at St. Vincent–St. Mary High School in Akron, Ohio.
Instead of focusing on LeBron, Deveney, a long-time Sporting News NBA expert who now writes for Heavy.com, wanted to shed some light on the other top prospects in that draft.
"There was never any doubt that LeBron was going to be the No. 1 pick, but there were legitimate people (as I recall, Chad Ford of ESPN was among them, as well as a scout, Tony Ronzone) who were saying that Carmelo Anthony and/or Darko Milicic could be just as good if not better," Deveney told me via email. "And that was my focus was comparing those two to the hype and circumstances that surrounded LeBron."
"Obviously, Darko was a bust, there's no other way to say it. But Anthony was at least close to equal with James by most measures in his first season."
Before you kill Deveney for thinking that Milicic was a top prospect, keep in mind that Pistons' GM Joe Dumars validated his intel by taking Milicic No. 2 in the draft a month later.
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What we (and others) got wrong about LeBron James in 2003
How could anyone have doubted LeBron's future success? He was a legendary high school player that sold out arenas and consistently dominated under the brightest lights. It didn't take a professional scout to see that he was a man among boys. But he did have some legitimate weaknesses in his game.
"Two aspects of James's game the most often questioned are his shooting and defense," Deveney wrote back in 2003. "His shot is subpar, and because of that, he probably will struggle early in his career. He must work on it."
That shooting critique turned out to be somewhat right, until it wasn't.
LeBron was a good-not-great 3-point shooter in high school, connecting on 36.0 percent of his attempts. As a rookie in the NBA, he shot just 29.0 percent from 3. He was so transcendent at everything else that his lack of shooting didn't hold him back, with the exception of some key moments.
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During the 2007 Finals, Gregg Popovich's Spurs team swept LeBron's Cavs by taking advantage of that shooting weakness. Pop told his players to sag off LeBron, resulting in him shooting just 4-of-20 from 3. LeBron's shaky outside shooting showed up again in 2013, when Popovich used that same strategy against the Heat. Again, LeBron's team lost the series.
LeBron was able to prolong his career and win several rings in part by becoming much better as a perimeter shooter. Through his first eight seasons, LeBron hit just 32.9 percent from deep. He hit 35.9 percent of his 3's from Year Nine onward, and topped over 40 percent from deep twice.
Sagging off from LeBron is no longer a viable strategy. In particular, the pull-up 3 has become a real weapon for him. He deserves a ton of credit for working hard at that aspect of his game to transform a weakness into a strength.
The other question mark about LeBron surrounded his defense. As Deveney wrote, "He never had to play the defensive stopper's role against someone with comparable skills, so his defense is an unknown, not a negative. He has the tools to become a very good defender, just as Garnett, Bryant, and McGrady have."
Deveney's assessment doesn't look bad, even with the advantage of over two decades of hindsight. It is extremely difficult to project defense from a 17-year-old. But Deveney saw a Kevin Garnett-level of potential, and LeBron delivered.
LeBron hasn't been a plus defender over the last several seasons. For most of his career though, he was elite, making six All-Defensive teams. Defensive Player of the Year is the one major award that has eluded him, but he has finished runner-up twice and has seven top-10 finishes in his career. He will go down as a remarkable two-way force.
Perhaps the most iconic play of LeBron's career was his chase-down block in Game 7 of the 2015 NBA Finals, helping to win the game and title in dramatic fashion for the Cavs.
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Our misses on LeBron do not look nearly as bad as our headline suggests. There were some admittedly tougher looks though when it came to Milicic, who averaged 6.0 points per game over a 10-year journeyman's career.
"You'd have to work out all three, at least, to compare them," one college scout told Deveney. "And my best guess is that it would be close, but James might not come out on top."
Scouts weren't the only ones to get it wrong. Scootie Penn, a former Ohio State point guard and European pro who was quoted in Deveney's story, was about as far off as possible.
"He's the real deal," Penn said of Milicic. "I have seen LeBron, and I have played against Darko. It's a tough call, but Darko is a legit 7-footer who can shoot the ball. He is tough and he is only 17. It's hard to describe the kid unless you see him."
While LeBron's maturity and future work ethic were questioned at the time, it was actually Milicic who fell victim to those pitfalls. He later admitted that he lacked the discipline and emotional maturity to succeed in the NBA, even getting drunk before practices. LeBron, on the other hand, had a level of determination that made him a foolproof star.
"I think the thing that stands out to me, and this was very early in my career, is the idea that you just did not know what kind of worker LeBron would be," Deveney said. "And you realize over time, that is true of every prospect, every top pick who comes in. You don't know the mindset, just how psycho the guy is going to be about getting better."
"It's the difference between Michael Jordan and Clyde Drexler. Obviously, Clyde is great, but he did not have the extra little chip that Jordan had. And looking back, Anthony was Drexler, and James was Jordan. But you can't tell that at age 18-20, which is why drafting is so inexact."
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What we got right about LeBron
Deveney and everyone else knew that LeBron's physical gifts were a once-in-a-generation blessing that was going to give him a pretty solid floor. He was dominant, getting to the rim with ease and finishing with authority.
"At this point, James has more ability than any prep player who previously has made the jump to the NBA, with the possible exception of Kevin Garnett," Deveney wrote. "Even at 6-8, 240 pounds, James can handle the ball, cross up defenders and blow by anyone with his unpredictable first step. He is a first-rate passer with a flair for the exciting, and he ranks with McGrady and Kobe Bryant as this country's best finishers at the rim."
That assessment was dead-on. More amazingly, it still holds up today. While LeBron isn't nearly as spry as he was two decades ago, he's still one of the strongest guys on the floor. When he gets downhill, he remains impossible to stop. And his passing should be the weapon that unlocks all of the talent in Philadelphia.
LeBron has stood the test of time for 23 years and counting, which is in many respects a more impressive feat in basketball years than the 140 years that Sporting News has been around in the publishing industry. We've both taken our share of losses, as anyone will that lasts the test of time. But the wins far outpace them. And we're both ready to add to our legacy for another year.
