The Kid from Akron is Sports Illustrated’s Sportsman of the Year for 2012

by Cleveland Frowns on December 5, 2012

An easy choice for the magazine and a great read by Lee Jenkins.

Highlights include a focus on how LeBron’s intelligence impacts his game (“He’s not smart,” says [Duke basketball coach Mike] Krzyzewski. “He’s brilliant. And I don’t like to use that word.”), as well as on LeBron’s work through his foundation, Wheels for Education, that conducts a program open to every incoming third-grader in the Akron public school system deemed at-risk.

The article mentions that Eighty-four percent of Akron’s public elementary school students live in poverty, and touches on LeBron’s days growing up on North Hill, where, if not for the community support that allowed him to go to St. Vincent/St. Mary, he’d have attended the same North High School featured in Zac Jackson’s article that we linked to this morning.

Read the whole thing and we’ll be back tomorrow, hopefully with an X’s and O’s post and maybe something else.

—————

RELATED: A Ring for The King: The Kid from Akron is a World Champ and Indisputably the Best Basketball Player on the Planet.

  • http://www.clevelandfrowns.com/ Cleveland Frowns

    In other news, I had forgotten about the time that Art Shell accused Mike Lombardi of “calling reporters around the country to criticize Raiders staff.”

    Added this link to yesterday’s post: oak.scout.com/2/642772.html

    • Cranky M

      “Lombardi has also contacted several teams around the NFL seeking out potential jobs but with no luck.”
      I feel as if i should say something here, but really….that pretty much says it all.

      • https://twitter.com/jimkanicki jimkanicki

        like klosterman and gladwell and all touched by the pimping of simmons/espn, lombardi has lost his ‘relevancy.’

        [ok that was a strained facility to register a grievance on the dumbing down of our mother tongue by espn. see attached. the word is relevance; relevancy is a hack.]

    • Jim

      Some guy (i.e. Lombardi’s friend) was just discussing why he would be a great GM for Cleveland on the Bull and the Fox show. He went so far as to call out all the “vitriol” directed to Lombardi by Cleveland and the media as of late, going as far to say that someone must have an “agenda” against Lombardi. I had to turn it off after that.

      • zarathustra

        Right, because tony grossi would never be vitriolic or have an agenda.

        • humboldt

          It’s possible to be vitriolic and have an agenda and still be right.

          • zarathustra

            This is a very good point and really a universal rule we all should remember. I would however propose the tony grossi corollary for instances when the person with the agenda has a history of being wrong, particularly when pushing a petty agenda.

        • Jim

          Don’t disagree regarding Grossi, but Lombardi’s friend was talking in generalities; i.e. all of the Cleveland media who has come out en masse against Lombardi must have some unspoken agenda against him.

  • willy loman

    I thought LeBron chose SVSM over Buchtel?

    • http://www.clevelandfrowns.com/ Cleveland Frowns

      He did, and as I understand it he wouldn’t have had the Buchtel option available to him either if not for the aforementioned community support, but the point re: “growing up on North Hill” is the same either way.

    • Jim

      He chose SVSM because his friend wanted to go play there, Dru Joyce and he and his buddies all wanted to play together. But yes, it would have been Buchtel he went to if not SVSM.

      • munasrevenge

        Prescient.

    • FSOhioZjackson

      At the time, all the basketball players in the city were going to Buchtel, and to my knowledge there was pretty much open enrollment within city limits. If he lived in Spring Hill at the time – and I don’t know – Buchtel probably would have been the closest school, geographically.

      Either way, Keith Dambrot made sure that didn’t happen. Worked out pretty well for both parties.

      • http://www.clevelandfrowns.com/ Cleveland Frowns

        Right. The main point in the post was just that he grew up on North Hill, and North High is the school that’s closest to North Hill.

  • mo_by_dick

    Lee Jenkins, aka internet superstar Leroy Jenkins?

  • http://twitter.com/cpmack Chris M

    Ruh roh. Darden Restaurants, creators of the world famous Cheddar Bay biscuits, are apparently having their stock murdered because they feel that people shouldn’t have health insurance.

    http://thinkprogress.org/health/2012/12/05/1285261/darden-olive-gardeb-obamacare/

    • http://www.clevelandfrowns.com/ Cleveland Frowns

      This is a big problem.

      • bupalos

        Suggest name change to “Obamacare Bay.”

        • Believelander

          If the Olive Garden has its way, it’ll be “Disenfranchisement of the Common People Bay Biscuits”

  • Bryan

    Frowns + LBJ = bite my lip before I waste 7 hours in an epic Comment Section battle.

    Stepping away from the keyboard….

  • bupalos

    While it’s hard for me to see much more than Nike brand management in all this stuff now, this certainly is a hell of a lot better approach than the initial ads they ran there for a while with the black-hat stuff and the ‘just-gots-to-be-me’ schtick. This one is tons more believable, at least nods towards virtue, and only lapses into irony once, when weeping along with the injustice of Lebron’s never having a chance to be an underdog. Uh….

    But note to marketing folk: when you want to do any kind of gentle humanizing hagiography, ignore any impulse or order from shadowy superiors to include Pat Riley in ANY way. His corrosive hair slime drips all over anything he comes near. In a smarmy contest he makes David Stern look like Ethel Merman.

    Definitely prefer the first article on all grounds.

    • bupalos

      Replying to and liking my own comment for working in Ethel Merman.

      • TWMBrad

        There’s no business like show business! I liked Obamacare Bay also. You’re on a bit of a role.

  • bupalos

    “I’m a Catholic, and I was an altar boy, so I say my prayers at night
    and I believe someone up there is taking care of us,” Riley begins.
    “From where I was standing, there was a backlight on LeBron from the
    arena, and as the [beer] pellets sprayed up in the air, they looked like
    they were forming a halo over him. This is what I saw: The good Lord
    was saying, ‘LeBron, I’m going to help you through this night because
    you’re a nice person, and I’m going to give you 45 and 15. But as you
    walk off, I’m going to humble the heck out of you.’ And, you know what,
    that’s the best thing that could have happened.”

    I swear to Jesus and all the rest that Pat Riley is drinking Lebron’s blood. Horrible. Most Horrible.

  • CleveLandThatILove

    The kid from Akron needs Botox.

  • BIKI024

    BRON BRON!

  • BIKI024

    nice to see Joe Thomas coming strong with some fighting words against Hillis.

    http://www.cleveland.com/browns/index.ssf/2012/12/cleveland_browns_joe_thomas_pe.html#incart_river_default#incart_2box

    • http://www.clevelandfrowns.com/ Cleveland Frowns

      Yeah, always good to give the other team bulletin board material for no reason, especially when they’re already grieving over something else. Brilliant.

      • BIKI024

        Hey whatever it takes for you to think the Chiefs have a shot this weekend. Bhahahahahabahahahabahahah

      • http://twitter.com/cpmack Chris M

        So a failed former coach, failed former quarterback and failed former running back are going to benefit from bulletin board material? Color me skeptical.

        Besides, as I saw someone write on Twitter, the defense is going to want to murder Hillis for that circus act he pulled last year. If anyone is motivated, I think it’s going to be those guys.

    • CleveLandThatILove

      Should have waited until he was heading out of town to poke the bear (if at all).

      • BIKI024

        the timing may be off, but obviously the questioning reporter hit a nerve with Joe who rarely says anything negative. seems obvious now on what players were really feeling behind the scenes. i mean, the Hillis saga was one of the main storylines of the season last year and no one really seems to be talking about it much this year. just like Chris Mc said below, I expect the Browns defense to be fired up to take down Hillis

        • CleveLandThatILove

          Sure, but why make it a storyline AGAIN – I thought the players were so sick of hearing about Hillis drama last year.

          • BIKI024

            well, this was the first time we’ve actually heard anyone go on record, particularly from the player’s perspective.
            it is what it is. i’ll stand by Joe, who will go down as one of the best Browns ever all day over Mr. Toxic.

  • KeepHeckert

    Help to keep Mike Lombardi out of Berea by signing this petition.

    https://www.change.org/petitions/joe-banner-ceo-cleveland-browns-do-not-hire-mike-lombardi#

  • humboldt

    “He’s brilliant.”

    Sure, as a basketball player he has always had a preternatural gift for the game — that isn’t even debatable. But there are, of course, multiple forms of intelligence, and Lebron’s emotional intelligence is so stunted that it borders on sociopathy.

    That said, am glad things like the SI honor don’t bother the fan base in Cleveland anymore. There is some semblance of healing and forgiveness inherent in that, as well as our characteristic resiliency as a fan base.

    I still think a return of LBJ is feasible if/once he has matured emotionally.

  • http://www.clevelandfrowns.com/ Cleveland Frowns

    Jeez Bernie went on KNR today stinking drunk. I’ve never heard him this bad. This is really sad. http://yourlisten.com/channel/content/16931809/Bernie

    • BIKI024

      Wow! He def sounded hammered, but spoke with clarity and clairvoyance when talking about the Browns FIFTH victory this Sunday! Woof woof woof!

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