John Walters

“Who we waitin’ on?” asks Cleveland Cavalier point guard Mo Williams.

“LeBron.”

It is wet, dreary Friday evening in Columbus, Ohio. The Cleveland Cavaliers huddle in an entryway in the Schottenstein Center moments before their final exhibition game against the Washington Wizards. The players fidget restlessly, a tribe without a leader. Then, bouwnding down the hall, all 6 feet, 9 inches of him, comes LeBron James. Throws his arms around two teammates.

“Alright now,” he proclaims. “Our Father, who art in heaven …”

And in perfect lockstep, the Cavs fall into prayer.

No. 23 is only 23. Already, though, he has played five NBA seasons. Crossed the 10,000-point barrier (the youngest player ever to do so, a full year younger than Kobe Bryant). Taken the Cavs to the NBA Finals one season and to the very brink of them the next. Played in two Olympics, winning bronze in 2004 and four years later, as the leader of the “Redeem Team”, vanquishing those dark memories of self-absorbed superstars with a gold medal in Beijing.

LeBron James, the man with a tattoo across the upper third of his back that reads “CHOSEN”, leads his team in prayer. The man who is the answer to the prayers of so many, from the city of Cleveland to David Stern to Phil Knight.

“…. thy kingdom come, thy will be done …”

King James. LeBron embraces the moniker without reservation, has never lost a wink of sleep from the weight of his once-in-a-generation potential. Is it simply coincidence that he and Tiger Woods share a birthday (Dec. 30)?

Three nights earlier in Philadelphia, an observer had noticed LeBron fidgeting with his wristbands for much of the game. “Those are my ‘King James’ wristbands,” he said, exhibiting what resembled a Livestrong bracelet. “I was flipping them around so that the words are on the outside. I don’t like when I can’t see the ‘King James’.”

He noticed the bemused stare.

“That’s a serious answer,” James said affably. “In high school I played with rubber bands around my wrists for good luck. Now I have these.”

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Now he has … everything: fame, wealth, youth, two young sons (princes) with his longtime girlfriend. In Columbus, two brand new King James wristbands lie sealed in clear plastic on the seat in front of his locker. He has the keys to the kingdom, not to mention — thanks to recent ceremonies in his native and adopted Ohio homes — the keys to the cities of Akron and Cleveland. He has everything except …

“… and deliver us from evil. Amen.”

“OK now,” LeBron says as the circle grows tighter. “One, two, three … championship!”

LeBron James, a man self-aware enough to know whether or not his bracelets are inside-out while scoring 30 points per game, does not wear the number 23 casually. He wears it in honor of his fin-de-siecle forebear, Michael Jordan, who began brightening up Midwestern winters the same year LeBron was born. But MJ also won NBA championships, six of them with the Chicago Bulls. James still yearns for his first (though, it needs to be said that Jordan did not win his first until his seventh season; LeBron is beginning his sixth).

And yet the NBA, and by no means only the NBA, has already anointed him. The fans in Columbus, a city that is home to the nation’s largest undergraduate population of any university (Ohio State), gives LeBron, a man who never attended college, a royal welcome. Though only an exhibition game, ESPN televises it nationally.

That was Friday night. On Saturday, LeBron was a guest on ESPN’s wildly popular, live on-campus telecast, “College Gameday”. A former first-team all-state wide receiver as a sophomore at St. Vincent-St. Mary High School in Akron, James likely would have been a tremendous talent for the Buckeyes had he gone that route … running routes.

On Tuesday he will again appear in prime-time on ESPN, as the Cavs open the season in Boston against the Celtics. Certainly last spring’s memorable seven-game Eastern Conference finals between these two teams was the impetus behind having this as the NBA’s season premiere.

On Wednesday King James will return to his castle, Cleveland’s Quicken Loans Arena, to host a rally and free concert to be given by his good friend (and possible future boss) Jay-Z. Dubbed the “Last Chance for Change”, the rally is being held explicitly in support of voting and, implicitly, of Democratic candidate Barack Obama.

Such is the influence of King James: he even makes Ohio sound exciting.

Like any worthy sovereign, King James appears to take the duties and obligations of his reign seriously. On Friday he went through a rigorous pre-game shooting routine for 20 minutes before returning to the Cavs’ locker room for his regularly scheduled pregame press scrum. En route he was stopped twice: Once by a local Columbus television crew who asked for a few minutes for an on-air interview. Next, he was stopped by a K-9 unit policeman, who had two basketballs and a Sharpie pen that needed LeBron’s attention (and whose kids probably consider him the coolest dad on the planet right about now).

James dutifully, if not cheerfully, obliged. After all, this is every day, every hour, for him. The crown never comes off in public for LeBron, whose 6-9 bearing and mature features and occasional beard actually provide him a regal bearing. Perhaps after his first NBA ring, or second, King James will build that personal moat around himself that Jordan built (that Magic never did).

For now, however, King James is still accessible to his subjects. In September he participated in an outdoor H-O-R-S-E contest in Venice Beach and actually got schooled by a trick-shot artist-cum-warehouse worker named David Kalb. Off with Kalb’s head? Wrong despot, wrong century. James stormed off in mock anger, but he was actually a great sport about it.

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