AKRON, Ohio - For LeBron James, turning 30 means taking stock of a whirlwhind year and an ever-growing empire.
It marks almost 15 years in the spotlight, too.
James was still growing into his Nikes -- someone bought them then. James didn't yet have his own code to the Swoosh Kingdom -- but it was apparent early in his high school career at Akron St. Vincent-St. Mary that he was a basketball prodigy. The full media crush and celebrity appearances at St. V-M games really didn't start until James was a junior, but from the months before he entered high school through his 16th birthday, which came during his sophomore season, he developed his game and positioned himself for what was to come.
"I thought he was Magic Johnson," University of Akron coach Keith Dambrot said. "I really did. People looked at me like I was crazy, but I knew."
Dambrot was the coach at St. V-M then and worked in the financial business in Akron. He'd coached twins Carl and Charles Thomas at Eastern Michigan and was managing their money then as they played professionally. Carl had just signed with the Cavaliers and Charles was weighing overseas options when Dambrot told them he'd discovered a 14-year-old who was better than both of them.
"I thought Coach D had finally lost his mind," said Charles Thomas, who now coaches under Dambrot at Akron. "But I coached him in a summer camp, and he had the whole package. I know (Dambrot) told him to stay after camp one day and play with my brother and I and some older guys ... told him to play against some pros.
"LeBron didn't want to do it. I asked him if he was scared, and he changed his mind. Five minutes later he was in there going right at my brother. He was probably 170 pounds then, but he belonged."
Dru Joyce II -- whose son, Dru, was a longtime teammate and classmate of James -- took over as St. V-M's head coach after two years when Dambrot got back into college coaching. He began coaching James at 9 in local rec leagues and first put together a competitive, AAU-type traveling team when James was 11.
"Right away you saw the talents and the passing. He still wanted to get his but he could see the floor," Joyce said. "It was all so far away, though. Like a lot of kids, LeBron didn't like the skill work. He just wanted to play. He loved to play."
Joyce said that 11-and-under AAU team might have placed in a national tournament if another team hadn't lured a post player away with shoes and gear.
That player does not now have a mega contract with Nike.
"We went to the (14-and-under) AAU nationals in Houston," Joyce said. "Chris Paul was there. A bunch of almost fully grown men were playing ... guys who went to North Carolina and Stanford and Duke and other big schools after high school.
"We didn't win the tournament, but we were there five or six days. LeBron dominated. He was the best player there, and it probably wasn't close."
This was before Twitter, and YouTube mixtapes, and (very) premature prospect rankings. Word traveled a little slower. Pressure grew a little slower.
Now, young and gifted basketball prospects are measured against James.
"I judged LeBron early on as a very unique talent, and I thought he'd play two years in college and be a first-round pick," Thomas said. "With a little luck and more development, I thought he could be a very good NBA player."
Said Joyce: "I knew he could be a college player. I knew he was very good. I think once LeBron started to harness all of his talents and sort of realize how dominant he could be, getting a taste of it wasn't good enough. He just took off."
James was 16 in January of 2001 when he went for 36 points in a game in Columbus, Ohio against an Oak Hill Academy team that had four future McDonald's All-Americans. Those who remember agree now that was the game that any chance of James being a secret in any basketball circles disappeared.
"But you mention LeBron at 15 ... he had just turned 15 as a freshman and a few days after his birthday we played against Akron Garfield," Joyce said. "Local rivalry, high emotions, two good teams. I don't know what the box score said but I know he dominated. He was on the fast track."
At 15, James went to the prestigious Five-Star Basketball Camp and became the first freshman ever to make the junior/senior all-star game. Longtime basketball people started making comparisons. A buzz was growing.
"After that Five-Star Camp, which back then was where the best of the best went, a lot of those college coaches called me back," Dambrot said. "They told me I was right."
St. V-M went undefeated and won the Ohio Div. III state championship when James was a freshman. He was one of four freshmen who saw significant minutes. Oak Hill was the only team to beat St. V-M the following year.
"I remember LeBron getting his temps (temporary driver's license)," his high school teammate and classmate Willie McGee said. "We were trying to win games, trying to get better. I don't think anybody thought about would happen or grasped it.
"We came to high school and played older kids like we belonged. We had always won growing up, and whether we were just dumb or naive or whatever, we believed we'd beat anybody. And that (freshman) year we were beating teams by 30 or 40 points and Coach Dambrot kept making practice tougher. He kept pushing us."
McGee said James was "always a freak. Even before his body really came around, he could always turn the corner a little faster than most could. He could always jump out of the gym when he wanted to. When he started being able to dunk on people, that lit the fire."
Thomas recalls bringing some friends to a summer league game at Stow High School the summer James was 15. For the first half, Thomas said, James was "lazy and disinterested. Having a bad day. I went up to him at halftime and told him he was wasting our time, that we were leaving."
James asked Thomas to stay.
"He followed that with the greatest three minutes of basketball any 15-year-old ever played," Thomas said. "As coaches, we tell kids all the time they can't flip the switch, they can't just play when they feel like it. Well, LeBron had the ultimate switch. He had one in front, one in back, two on the side. He was amazing."
Thomas went back to Europe that fall and said he kicks himself for continuing to play and not sticking around Akron to coach James.
"I went to the gym one day a couple years later and he was 220, 230 pounds. He had grown three or four inches," Thomas said. "I knew I should have kicked his ass when I had the chance, because it wasn't happening anymore."
By his junior year, James was pegged as the No. 1 pick in the first NBA Draft for which he'd be eligible. St. V-M was invited to play across the country and often played in front of more than 5,000 people at home. A Sports Illustrated cover dubbed James "The Chosen One," and at 30 he's a two-time NBA champion and four-time NBA MVP.
"Before St. V-M basketball was known nationally and before LeBron James was LeBron James, I just remember us trying to get our homework done in study hall and trying to have good grades so the coaches didn't make us stay after practice," McGee said. "That sounds a little silly now, right?"
