
I’m a fair-weather sports fan. With the Pittsburgh Steelers being the exception, I don’t usually get too involved in my local sports teams unless they have a shot at a playoff berth as their season nears an end.
That was the case for the 10 years my wife and I lived in Hudson, OH, a suburb of Cleveland. As adopted Clevelanders during the tail end of LeBron James’ first stint with the Cleveland Cavaliers, we and the rest of that community lived through his departure to the Miami Heat in 2010 and the triumphal return to his hometown in 2014 which led to their winning the NBA championship in 2016.
Working for a bank in Akron, OH (LeBron’s hometown) I couldn’t help but learn about James’ history in the community. His high school years at St. Vincent-St. Mary. The ways in which he would support the community through his family foundation. The fact that he married his high school sweetheart and that together they have three children. Of course, everyone in Akron knew where LeBron lived when he was in town and there were always stories of occasional LeBron sightings.
More recently, LeBron made the national news after his son Bronny was selected by the Los Angeles Lakers in the 2024 draft after which, on October 22, 2024, Lebron and Bronny became the first father-son duo to appear in an NBA game together.
I was thinking about this recently when I came across an article from the New York Times and the Athletic that provided a fascinating insight into Bronny James, the young man that LeBron and his wife Savannah have raised. I was particularly struck by the fact that despite the limelight that their family must live in daily, how important it’s been to them that their son be solidly grounded. I’ve reprinted the beginning of the article below and provided the link to the entire article should you be intrigued enough to learn more about this family’s approach to parenting.
Bronny James’ ex-teachers, teammates in Ohio recall a kid who ‘wasn’t above anyone else’
by Joe Vardon
The New York Times & The Athletic
Oct 29, 2024
BATH TOWNSHIP, Ohio — Carrie Brown was an exasperated middle-school teacher who had a famous student she knew she could count on.
In the fall of 2017, Brown was teaching social studies at Old Trail School, a small private institution of about 500 children from ages 2 through eighth grade on a sprawling 62 acres inside Cuyahoga Valley National Park, a few miles northeast of Akron, Ohio.
Each day at recess, as Brown looked out onto the outdoor basketball court at the bottom of an old amphitheater, she watched her sixth-grade students bicker intensely over who should have the ball or take all the shots.
She knew Bronny James was the opposite of that when he was her student the year before, so she asked the seventh grader for help.
“I pulled him aside and said, ‘Hey, would you mind giving up a recess and talking to my sixth graders?’ But I didn’t tell him what to say,” Brown said during a recent tour of the school and visit with several of Bronny’s former teachers and coaches, in which Brown allowed The Athletic into her classroom where she once taught Bronny.
The hallways inside the Old Trail campus building where most classes are taught are long and narrow. The walls are white and the lockers red; there are hooks on both sides for younger students to hang their coats and backpacks.
Brown said she wasn’t surprised when Bronny, 13 at the time, agreed to forgo his recess, stroll down the long hallway past the lockers and the hooks and into Room 616 where she taught him world history to deliver his message.
But she was stunned by the poignancy and clarity of what he said. “It was like I paid him,” she said. “He said perfectly that, ‘If you ever want to play competitively, like for real, they’re not going to take you unless you’re a team player. You could be the best of the best. But if you don’t know how to work with other people, then they don’t want you on their team.’ “Coming from him, it meant so much, because he could speak to it.”
If all you know about Bronny James, 20, the eldest son of the world-renowned basketball megastar and billionaire LeBron James, is that Bronny is young, rich and famous, that he plays on the Los Angeles Lakers because his dad, who is the all-time leading scorer in NBA history and also a Laker, wanted it to be so, then the way the people of Old Trail remember him might surprise you.
Click the following link to read the full article: https://archive.ph/WgQMS
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