LeBron James Talks 'More Than a Game,' 'Fantasy Basketball Camp' & Michael Corleone

Kareem Abdul-Jabaar, Michael Jordan, Shaquille O'Neal ... Some of the NBA's all-time greats have made the jump (natch) from the hardwood to Hollywood.

The new basketball documentary 'More Than a Game' is a far more 'Hoop Dreams' than 'Space Jam,' but you have to wonder if this is the first of many times we'll see LeBron James, the game's biggest superstar, score on the big screen.

Filmed way back in 2003, the film follows the "Fab Five" of Akron, Ohio's St. Vincent–St. Mary High School basketball team on their quest for a national championship. James is obviously the big draw, but the film focuses more on the incredibly close-knit coterie of teammates than James himself. We played sports reporter for a day and caught up with "King James" -- who is also an executive producer on the film -- for an exclusive interview.

Did having documentary cameras follow you around at such a young age help prepare you for all the media attention you'd be getting later on in the pros?
Absolutely, it set me up exactly the right way that I needed to have. When I got to the NBA, it was easy for me.

At the time, did it put more pressure on you guys to perform?
Honestly, it didn't. We just thought it was kind of crazy that they wanted to follow high school guys around [laughs]. I mean, we were just having fun out there.

How do you think this film might change people's perspective of you?
I'm not sure. Honestly, that's not even what my goal is. I can't lead my life thinking, "What do other people think about me?" I hope that inner-city kids and African American kids can also believe that their dreams can become reality no matter the obstacles they may go through. And that the things they may go through, [no matter] how tough, [that] they can make it through. I don't care what people think about me.

'Game' was shot so long ago -- was it tough to get off the ground?
It was tough for the director [Kristopher Belman], at first, to get [people to agree on] his vision about the story. A lot of people didn't believe in his point of view, [to focus] not only on LeBron, but his four best friends, his high school coach and things like that ... They just wanted the LeBron footage, they didn't want everybody else, and that's not the story we wanted to get out of there. So it took us a little while until someone believed in us.

The film is drawing comparisons to 'Hoop Dreams.' Think they're similar?
Well, I love 'Hoop Dreams.' It's an unbelievable movie about kids and guys in the inner-city growing up, having dreams and things like that. I think it definitely [warrants] comparison to it, absolutely.

Are you still tight with all of your teammates? Do you see each other much?
Oh yeah, absolutely, all of them. We see each other a lot, especially during the summer time, because that's when everyone's home. Romeo [Travis] and Dru [Joyce] are playing professionally across seas, but during the summer we're together all the time. We still take a boys trip every summer. Usually we go to Vegas but we've been other places; we've be to Cancun, Mexico together, we do a lot of things. We try to go to Vegas every summer, those guys like the lights and the long nights [laughs].

Is there anyone in the NBA that you've bonded with like you have those guys?
Well, I've got some really good friends in the NBA. Chris Paul is one of my really dear friends. Carmelo Anthony's a good friend of mine. Dwayne Wade's a really good friend of mine, and a couple of my teammates back in Cleveland. Mo Williams is a good friend of mine. There's no way you can have the same relationship that you've had with guys that you've been friends with since you were 9 years old, but you can really have good friends and guys that you can count on.

If this story was made into a big budget Hollywood movie, who would you want to play you?
Um, I don't know. Someone that has great charisma, great laughter ... nah I'm just playin' [laughs]. I don't know. It'd be great though.

What's your favorite movie of all time?
'Godfather Part I' and 'II.' [The movies] give you all the life skills that you need, you know. I can relate to it ... Don Michael Corleone having to live two lives. How to manage his time between his family, which is the street guys, and his real family. I can relate to that -- how do I balance my time between basketball, my family in basketball and my family at home? Those movies are great.

What can you tell us about your acting debut, next summer's 'Fantasy Basketball Camp'?
It's about five guys from all over America [who come] to my fantasy basketball camp. Fantasy basketball camp is basically for guys 35 and over; these are guys who wish they could be in the NBA but absolutely have no talent, but they still love to play the game of basketball. So they come to my camp, they get put on these teams ... It's a comedy, it's about these five guys coming together as a team and trying to win a championship in my camp.

Who do you think is the greatest basketball player-turned-actor?
I don't know, Kareem, maybe. I mean, he got an opportunity to shoot with Bruce Lee, wow. I mean, how great is that?

We've seen Michael Jordan do family films, Kareem Abdul-Jabaar do comedy, Shaquille O'Neal do action movies, and Ray Allen do drama. What kind of genre would you want to work in?
I could do comedy. I see myself in comedy, or as a superhero type, bodybuilder type ... nah I'm just playin' [laughs].


source By: Kevin Polowy

LeBron James Rates Shaq's MC Skills 'A 10'

LeBron James may be the best player in the NBA (and there are arguments for him being the game's best of all time), but he hasn't yet tested his skills on the microphone like some other basketball stars. Allen Iverson, Ron Artest, Chris Webber and Kobe Bryant have all dipped their toes into the rap game with varying degrees of success, but perhaps the most successful (and ubiquitous) baller-turned-MC is Shaquille O'Neal. Shaq has put out several hit records and dropped a couple of popular singles (especially during the beginning of his career), and he happens to be James' newest teammate on the Cleveland Cavaliers. The Cavs got to the Eastern Conference Finals before falling to the Orlando Magic last season, but maybe Shaq is the missing piece of the puzzle.

James may not have any experience as a rapper, but he certainly knows his way around the hip-hop game. (You need only look at the soundtrack to his new movie "More Than a Game," which features appearances from T.I., Jay-Z, Eminem, Mary J. Blige, Lil Wayne and Kanye West, for proof.) So he knows a thing or two about quality rapping. But how would James rank his newest teammate as an MC?

MTV Shows

So there you have it. While LeBron named Jay-Z as his number one pick for the annual MTV News Hottest MCs list, he thinks that Shaq could easily hold his own with the likes of J. Hova. Along with a championship, maybe LeBron can broker a long-awaited collaboration between Jigga and Shaq

source: by Kyle Anderson in Music
mtv

LeBron James to Star in Own Movie, Somehow Make More Money

LeBron James is often regarded in dramatic tones. And now, he'll have the opportunity to show just how dramatic he can be.

Sorry, this story requires that I lead with the most obnoxiously cliche sentence possible. It's an unwritten law of sports writing.

On the heels of More Than a Game, a documentary about his high school yearsFantasy Basketball Camp from Universal Pictures and Imagine Entertainment, Variety reports.

The movie has Brian Grazer attached to produce. Grazer has compared his approach ton the project to his production work on the Eminem vehicle 8 Mile. Because "gritty film about Detroit's poor white lifestyle blending with the underground hip-hop scene" lends itself well for a transition to "comedy about five guys from different backgrounds who come to Vegas to live out their fantasy by attending the LeBron James Adult Basketball Camp."

The plot details are sketchy at this point, but apparently it revolves around the campers pulling LeBron into their personal lives. The premise sounds like "City Slickers" meets "Celtic Pride," although hopefully not in a way that makes us want to gouge our eyes out. A commenter points out that Grazer is a producing legend, having contributed to Sports Night, Inside Man, and Arrested Development, favorites of mine among his production list which is about a thousand miles long. Considering the guy's track record, you have to believe he has a pretty good grip on the project (please ignore the rash of late-career Eddie Murphy flicks).

This is a pretty big step for LeBron as he tries to rehab his image after the handshakegate and MVPshirtgate and dunkgate and all the other gates he's been in this summer. It also illustrates that as a cultural icon, LeBron really has arrived. To transcend to mainstream media in a different format is to venture into territory only few have accessed. I for one am hoping we see LeBron James, Adrian Peterson, and Albert Pujols into a ProStars 2010 TV show.

If you're looking for a basketball angle, riddle me this: the article says that producers are hoping to shoot next summer. Well, assuming the Cavaliers make it at least as far as the Eastern Conference Finals in late May, that gives LeBron a very tight window to film before the 2010 international competition begins. It's likely that this won't interfere in the slightest, but one might want to keep an eye on that as we progress.

(HT: Dark Horizons) hitting theaters next month, James is now set to star in another movie titled


Filed Under: Cavaliers
Source: MATT MOORE

LeBron James and his band of brothers

The NBA superstar offers some life lessons in his new memoir 'Shooting Stars' and related documentary, 'More Than a Game.'

By David Davis

In 2002, LeBron James first appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated, which dubbed him "The Chosen One." He was compared to Michael Jordan and Magic Johnson.

Talk about hype: James was all of 17 and a junior in high school.

Now 24, James is the NBA's reigning MVP and the best hoops player on the planet not named Kobe Bryant. Today, he views that SI cover as a symbol of the outsized celebrity he attained at a young age.

"Now that I look back on it, I'm like, 'wow, that was huge,' " he says. "We were one of the first [high-school teams] to start it all up, doing nationally televised games, traveling the U.S., taking planes to big tournaments."

James is speaking on the phone from Cleveland while on a full-court-press promotion tour. He's simultaneously publicizing his first book, "Shooting Stars" (co-written by Buzz Bissinger, author of "Friday Night Lights"), and hyping a related documentary that he executive produced ("More Than a Game," which premiered at the 2008 Toronto International Film Festival, opens on Oct. 2).

The memoir and the movie are calculated to boost James' crossover marketability, highlighting his "brand" of on-court brilliance and off-court accessibility. Both projects are dear to James because they focus on his hardscrabble youth and the enduring bonds he developed with four boyhood friends: Sian Cotton, Dru Joyce III, Willie McGee and Romeo Travis.

"I've been through a lot in my life," James says. "I've overcome adversity and a lot of things to become who I am today. They're part of the reason for where I am today."

Disrupted childhood

As the only child of a single mother who gave birth when she was 16, James grew up in Akron, Ohio, without knowing his biological father. He and his mom, Gloria, moved 12 times between the time he was 5 and 8. "I just grabbed my little backpack, which held all the possessions I needed, and said to myself what I always said to myself: 'It's time to roll,' " James writes.

When LeBron was in the fifth grade, Gloria agreed to let him to live with a local family. James describes the experience as "good karma" because he found stability and a surrogate family in the home of Frankie and Pam Walker.

Meanwhile, even as James was showing immense skill in basketball and football, he and the other members of the self-proclaimed "Fab Four" (Travis had not yet joined the group) were becoming inseparable. "We shared everything with each other," James writes. "[P]izza, Starbursts, the thin sticks of Twizzlers, it didn't matter."

Their success on the Shooting Stars youth team (coached by Dru Joyce's father) captivated the basketball fans of Akron, the once-thriving "Rubber City" that had fallen on hard times. Most people assumed that the Fab Four would attend Buchtel High, a predominantly African American public school. Instead, they opted for St. Vincent-St. Mary, a Catholic private school that is primarily white, in large part because Little Dru, as James calls him, wasn't going to make varsity at Buchtel.

The black community's anger about the decision, James recalls, "didn't surprise me. It was typical. We knew that we were going to get backlash for not going to Buchtel, and we were ready to accept that."

With Travis on board, the Fab Five won three Ohio championships, as well as a No. 1 national ranking in James' senior year. And they continued to stir considerable controversy because of the myriad attempts to cash in on James' stardom.

The school moved its home games to the University of Akron arena to sell more tickets. They played a national schedule that included a matchup against Orange County powerhouse Mater Dei at Pauley Pavilion. ESPN2 televised the game live. Later, James' mother took out a $50,000 loan to purchase LeBron a Hummer for his 18th birthday.

For these and other transgressions, James and his buddies were pilloried by media, parents and peers. They retreated and developed their own mantra: "We all we got."

Today, James admits that the travel was "excessive." He also concedes that he didn't always handle stardom well. He smoked marijuana and partied hard on the eve of a crucial game. "It was something I tried," he says. "Our junior year we were doing some things we shouldn't have been doing."

What happened next was what he calls "bad karma." Says James: "We didn't respect the game of basketball. When we got to the last game of the season, the championship, we got beat."

The Fab Five learned their lesson. In their senior year, James says, "we rededicated ourselves to the game, we approached the game the right way, and good karma came back to us."

Bissinger believes the criticism the teens faced was often unfair. "They did some things they shouldn't have, but these were kids," he says. "However mature they were, they were still high school kids. What I admire about LeBron and the other members of the Fab Five is they stuck together. They did not go off the deep end."

Mum's the word

James steers "Shooting Stars" away from other incidents during this time. He doesn't mention Savannah Brinson, his longtime girlfriend and mother of his two children, except in the acknowledgments. There's little discussion of his decision not to attend college and instead jump to the NBA; there's scant analysis of the convoluted Nike-Adidas machinations that resulted in James' $90-million deal with the Swoosh before he had dribbled an NBA basketball.

Perhaps these topics are too heavy for this book, which James says is "geared toward inner-city kids that have a dream and don't really believe there's a way out. I was one of those kids who didn't care about what other people said your life should be like. I made it my way."

The story, Bissinger says, is "almost like the flip side of 'Friday Night Lights,' where I saw the destructive role that sports can play on kids. Here, sports played a very constructive role. It taught them about teamwork and what happens when you become arrogant. Ultimately, it taught them about what happens when you come together and commit yourself."

"What I can say to parents is, don't take your kid's childhood away," James says. "If he's an aspiring athlete or a phenom, let him continue to be with his friends and have fun."

With his sublime talent, the 6-foot-8-inch James has certainly enjoyed himself in his six seasons as a pro. In 2007, he led the Cleveland Cavaliers to the NBA Finals. Then he helped the U.S. win gold at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. His endorsements make him one of the highest-paid athletes in the world.

His résumé still lacks the ultimate validation: an NBA championship. In the off-season, amid rumblings that James will leave Cleveland after the 2009-10 campaign, the Cavs traded for former Lakers center Shaquille O'Neal. If Shaq can help LeBron win the title, the thinking goes, then maybe James will stay. Whether LeBron and Shaq can do it will be among the most-watched story lines of the upcoming NBA campaign. So, too, will be James' next move.

Having delved into his past, James declines to forecast his future. "That's what you writers do, you make the predictions," he laughs. "I just play the game."

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