A closer look at LeBron hype

Last March, my friend Dave and I went to Columbus to watch the state high school basketball tournaments.
Since a state final had never been sold out at the Schottenstein Center, we figured we could get tickets to every game -- including the Division III final between Akron St. Vincent-St. Mary and Casstown Miami East.
We got there an hour early, parked and started walking toward the arena. A mile away from the arena, I spotted a scalper with a sign reading, "Need Tickets."
"Uh-oh," I said. "That's not a good sign."
Left out: Dave and I didn't get tickets -- of the 30 scalpers I saw, none had any to sell -- and over the next year, LeBron James would be named MVP of the summer ABC camp, become the most famous high school athlete in the country and land on the cover of Sports Illustrated.
Compared to now, the hype was hushed.
Fast forward eight months. I'm walking down a corridor leading to the Washington Wizards' locker room in Gund Arena when I passed by a tall teen-ager in a green and yellow lettermen's jacket.
He was waiting to talk to one of the NBA players. I'll let you guess which one.
Four months later, I was covering a state semifinal game between the Irish and Poland.
In the time it took to walk from the media parking lot in the back of the Schottenstein Center to the entrance (about 40 seconds), I was asked if I had any extra tickets at least 10 times. (I didn't.) It was 9 a.m.
Comparable: Outside the arena, a Wellington radio broadcaster compared the hype to when Jerry Lucas played in the 1950s.
"Jerry Lucas was still the best basketball player I've ever seen," he said. "Of course, it was a different game then."
An hour before tipoff, you could buy tickets for as low as $25 -- more than the $7 face value, but a lot less than expected.
Inside, Poland's student section, which can trade taunts with anyone, tossed verbal jabs at James. He merely smiled.
With seconds remaining in the first quarter, James was elbowed in the face on a 3-point buzzer-beating attempt (it missed, barely) and got a bloody nose. Poland's students began chanting, "Where's your mommy?" (Unlike at the George Jr. game, she remained seated.)
My favorite was: "That's all right, that's OK, you'll ride the bench in the NBA."
James had three dunks and missed an alley-oop opportunity during the game, a 76-36 Irish victory. After each dunk, you heard a roar from the St. Vincent-St. Mary student section while 10,000 adults remained seated and silent, careful not to treat a state semifinal basketball game like entertainment.
Next to me, a 300-pound, middle-aged sportswriter laughed about a shot that Poland senior David McGarry put up. The guy later made an inappropriate joke about the Titanic.
It was hard to tell which was less impressive: his sense of humor or his physique.
Meeting the media: After the game, James entered the media room with two very large diamond earrings, a diamond-encrusted crucifix necklace and a pair of headphones fixed just above his ears. Next to him, Irish junior Romeo Travis stared blankly at a stat sheet, popping gummi bears into his mouth from a rustling plastic bag that echoed through the room through the microphone in front of him.
A crowd of about 80 reporters asked James a handful of questions. He was polite, complimenting his teammates, tossing a couple cocky comments (does it count as being cocky when you're LeBron James?) and talking in a rapid delivery that frustrated anyone trying to take notes.
The whole ordeal was over by 4 p.m. Of course, it was only a warmup for Saturday's final.
If we're not careful, things might get a little crazy.
XJoe Scalzo is a sportswriter for The Vindicator. Write him at scalzo@vindy.com.