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I live in a 3rd world country and didn't have high-speed internet and social media in the early 2000s. Yet I do remember me and my classmates being hyped about LeBron. We had magazines with LeBron on the cover and watched his high school games on ESPN. He was billed as someone with MJ's scoring, Magic's playmaking, Malone's built, with otherworldly freak athleticism. In fact, Nike gave him a $90 million/7-year contract in 2003 while they gave Kobe a $40 million/ 4-year contract that same year. That should tell you how much hype he had. Zion and Wemby don't come close to the hype that LeBron had. And what's even more amazing is the motherfucker actually lived up to it.

He was declared the Chosen One in high school.

He lived up to the hype. He’s a legend.

People should ask themselves if LeBron’s career came BEFORE Jordan, would Jordan still be considered the GOAT?

Probably was and forever will be the most hyped high school basketball player ever. It was the perfect confluence of factors: HS straight to the NBA still a thing, a ridiculous talent, the boom of the early-ish internet and social media era, arguably peak ESPN... List goes on of all of the things that lined up just right. The access to players was approximately at the high level it is now, but it was still new enough that he was kind of the only big deal and we as a culture didn't know how to put our guards up and cast a wider net with these kids. Whereas now there is too much and lots of kids just exist in a sea of other names. He was a big deal in the social consciousness. It was like a cloud hanging over the Cleveland franchise and affected the players that were currently on the team (see Boozer, Carlos lol).

Tl;dr: big deal. Mega hyped.

I went to watch him play a high school game at UCLA. He was so hyped he put up a light 30 in a blow out and the people in the crowd were like he’s good but he’s not as good as they all say. In hindsight we know now he was just getting in some cardio

Also Sebastian Telfair was also playing that night (against different team) and he’s the one that won the crowd.

Wemby-mania seems extremely weak in comparison.

That he might be the best prospect we’ve ever seen. He was an absolute no questions first overall pick at every moment of that draft cycle. When Cleveland won the lottery that year the owner said “we got him?” and looked deliriously happy. I wasn’t following the NBA closely that year but I thought he would be really good immediately. And although the tools were there, no one was saying he might be the greatest player of all time at age 18. But LeBron was an incredible prospect who was even more incredibly better than touted.

I remember they showed one of his high school games on espn and after the game one of the refs went up to him to ask to take a picture with him. People knew he was gonna be big

As for my experience, the 2003 draft was the first one I watched as an NBA fan. That was my benchmark of how a draft class and top pick should be. From that point, i assumed that draft classes and top picks are always gonna be as how 2003 showed it. I was wrong of course.

I probably took for granted the hype lebron had. But from how I remembered it, yes, there was the hype for him but so was also for the other members of the class like melo and wade. I think that point was the closest gap between melo and lebron in terms of who is better than the other. Since then, weve seen lebron's gap from the others go wider with a minor hiccup when dwade won the finals mvp in only his 3rd year.

The most hype around a pre-professional athlete in modern times, perhaps ever. He was on magazine covers. High school games on ESPN. Arenas packed not just with students, parents, and scouts, but every day basketball fans that had zero stake in Akron basketball. People paid money to fly to Akron just to see a high school basketball player.

Just think about what the corporate entities thought about him, not just pundits and basketball aficionados. Nike sat down an 18 year old high school student two weeks before he'd walk to accept his high school diploma and gave him a piece of paper promising 87 million dollars with a blank line underneath it. Gloria walked into a Hummer dealership with poverty level income and no assets and bargained for a $70,000 Hummer H2 with... her sons potential. Everyone knew what was happening, not just the basketball community.

The closest we've ever come (and no, Sebastian Telfair does not count) was Zion, with a close second probably being Wiggins up until Wemby's hype recently. There was nothing like it. You'd turn on ESPN after one of his high school games and boom, leading story. Then he did something more insane, he lived not only up to that hype, but above it. Way above it. It was a spectacle, for sure.

Lets put it this way. They were interviewing the Cavs ABOUT Lebron, 6 months before the draft

You knew he was big when he made channel 1 news.

I graduated in HS in 2002. I played basketball with two NBA players.

Even these guys worshiped LeBron.

These are guys if you asked about people like Amare, Bracey Wrights, Bosh, JJ, Shavlik Randolph, Zach Randolph, Marcus Taylor, Julius Hodge, TJ Ford, Eddy Curry, Shannon Brown, JR Giddens, or Charlie V they would say "oh they aren't that good, I'm better than him".

I started hearing about "some kid from Cleveland was going to be better than MJ" in 7th Grade. This is completely word of mouth pre-internet. This is when Streets and Smith, Tom Lemming, and Bob Gibbons basketball were the only guys covering HS at a national level. Obviously with the internet every year someone gets hyped.

I was officiating a MS Girls Basketball game 3 weeks ago. The guy working the table is the head Varsity Coach at a smaller HS. Well he is 28, and is a GYM Teacher. Well the site director, the AD, and me are all 37-45. We were talking about random players back in the day. And the Varsity coach was surprised we knew those guys like that. The news was covered differently. Detroit had two major newspapers and each Newspaper had literally 2 prep sports reports. Plus several other people in the newsroom. Every city was like that.

The Top HS players in a sport even in major cities were household names. Because you had NFL on Sunday, College Football.on Saturday. College Basketball was played mainly on Thursday through Sunday back then due.

Literally prep reporters based out of Detroit,Chicago, Louisville, Minnesota, etc were going to LeBron HS games his sophomore and junior year. Thats how he ended up on the cover of SI. By the time he was a Senior the national media was in a frenzy. The only comparable frenzy was Peyton Manning recruitment, Greg Oden was pretty nuts too, Terrelle Pryor, Fournette, Chris Simms, Anthony Munoz Jr, and Adrian Peterson. Meaning their recruitment, was covered at a national level, and their recruitment was making local news or even National News.

LeBron hype made those guys seem like covering a State Championship level game.

Unreal. Something else not mentioned, I remember being blown away that celebrities were going to high school gyms to watch a game.

One thing also not mentioned. There's a video of Bob Costas telling Lebron there's so much hype that if Lebron isn't a first ballot HOFer, then his career would be a disappointment.

Yet someone lived up to and exceeded the hype

How big was he? It’s almost impossible to understand when the only world you know is one with the Internet. It was a world where high school recruiting wasn’t an established business (I think scout.com and rivals.com were both in their infancy).

So he was competing with professionals for attention - and he got it. Even when he was a sophomore, his team had to move their home games to the University of Akron. By senior year, his games were on pay-per-view and ESPN.

There’s genuinely no comparison to the hype Lebron had, I laugh every time they claim someone’s hype is anywhere close. Best part is that he lived up to the hype and even exceeded it honestly

I m started watching him in 2009 while working at a news station, we broadcasted after the game. He was the most electric player I’ve ever seen. Young, fast, dominate. People need to realize that LeBron earned his place as one of the best ever.

I was 14/ irish. Never watched an NBA game. After the sports illustrated piece, his name travelled quickly in my country. Tracked his career since.

I've supported whatever team he is on. The hype was insane.

Crazy insane. No one has been hyped close to his level after him. His high school games were being aired on national tv. Everyone on was talking about him on the sports channels and the general audience had an idea of who he was.

The fact he’s met expectations and in some cases surpassed it is crazy

Absolutely insane. He was dominating in high school, but I watched the espn high school game and it was like "no way he can do this against grown men in the NBA, he ain't living up to the hype". Dude lived up to the hype.

To give it modern context, no #1 pick since Lebron has had anywhere near as much hype as he did. Wembanyama is the closest i've seen and I would say he was maybe at 50% of the Lebron hype.

The hype was so strong that I actually remember the names of some of his human teammates like Romeo Travis 😅

I’m from Ohio, Cleveland specifically. I kidd you not we all knew about him from the time he was in like 7th grade. From since I can remember his hype has been unreal and he’s been considered a phenom. It’s unreal that he never crumbled under the pressure and exceeded the expectations.

I’ll tell you this much: there was no social media and in Finland everyone who follows basketball knew about this kid. I mean the hype was huge… and somehow he even outperformed. He’s the same age as I am. It’s been a ride man… wow.

What I didn’t like from the start is that he was calling himself “The King” from his 2nd season already… and I think he reach his peak up until is championship with Cleveland

I would say, it’s a kind of hype that we’ve never seen since and may never see again. I don’t think even Victor‘s hype was like the LeBron hype. I was an eighth grader when he was starting to get all the press and it went crazy and I cannot remember another time like it.

Imagine you start hearing about a kid in high school right now and people are saying he’s going to be the next michael Jordan. Doesn’t really sound believable. But then dude came in and was amazing. He was being compared to the greats immediately, and forever debated against someone else. Lebron or mj. Kobe or Lebron. It’s similar to wemby but imagine this first year of wemby as Lebron in high school

He was on the cover of sports illustrated when he was a junior in high school. This was when there were still 3.15 million weekly subscribers to the magazine. The cover read, “the chosen one”.

He still had to finish his junior year, and was barely 17.

LeBron was the single-most hyped player EVER. That hasn’t changed. The noise for Wemby was nothing compared to LBJ.

The second coming of Jordan

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In terms of the media coverage, it wasn't that much different than what you saw with Lonzo or Zion before their first season begun.

Before YouTube was a thing, I remember downloading highlights of his sophomore year games on Napster/LimeWire/Kazaa/ whatever the file sharing platform was at the time.

Nationally televised highschool games

Thing is the NBA was desperate at that time and needed someone like LeBron after MJ. That era of basketball was pretty bad to be honest. Its stars were either boring (Duncan) or hated (Kobe) with the exception of Shaq who was just incredible to watch. There wasn’t really anyone who looked like they were going to take the mantel.

The NBA was in a bad spot and needed someone to come along who they could market as the next Jordan type player, and LeBron happened to be there at the perfect time. Nobody says LeBron saved the NBA but he basically did just that.

Compared to Wemby, who is coming in with the league in a much better place.

I remember his first NBA game @ Sacramento and it was actually pretty annoying. ESPN literally just talked about him the entire game and they would show highlights of him doing minor things.