Nobody does it better than King James, who led the
Los Angeles Lakers to a record-tying 17th
NBA championship while elevating his activism to new heights
![The most notable US athletes of 2020: No 1 – LeBron James, a man for all seasons](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/03b7b0960dd4168718f6f4089adb2d86a09ef216/0_6_1833_1100/master/1833.jpg?width=1200&height=630&quality=85&auto=format&fit=crop&overlay-align=bottom%2Cleft&overlay-width=100p&overlay-base64=L2ltZy9zdGF0aWMvb3ZlcmxheXMvdGctZGVmYXVsdC5wbmc&enable=upscale&s=e8790d7c3fef1a0576e34adf525a7917)
Last month an old interview of
LeBron James resurfaced that quickly went viral on NBA
Twitter. The grainy footage was from a program called HBO’s On the Record with Bob Costas that was recorded shortly before James made the jump from St Vincent-St Mary High to the professional ranks. By then he was already a national sensation – Sports Illustrated had featured him on its cover more than a year earlier under the headline THE CHOSEN ONE – having spent his final season of high school
basketball on a barnstorming tour that filled gyms and arenas around the country and sating the intense curiosity of a pre-YouTube world.
The clip is only 33 seconds in length, but it’s more than enough time to offer a sense of the extreme pressure this 18-year-old amateur faced on the doorstep of his destiny.