Lebron James: The Rise of a Star

He was featured on the covers of both Sports Illustrated and ESPN The Magazine. He has the scouts of every pro basketball team drooling. He has been touted wildly on national TV by basketball experts from Dick Vitale to Bill Walton. He has a reported $20 million dollar shoe contract pending. And he's still in high school. Why the big deal about LeBron James? The odds were against LeBron from the start. Born in poverty to a 16-year-old, drug-addicted single mom, without a father, raised by various family and neighbors . . . he could have become just another scarred product of a rough childhood in the projects. Instead, he's the darling of the sports world--and he plays the part well. Sportswriter David Lee Morgan has covered the LeBron phenomenon for the Akron Beacon Journal since the kid's freshman year and has been granted unequaled access to LeBron, his family, and his close friends. He's seen the exceptional play on the basketball court. But he's also seen how surprisingly well LeBron has handled the pressure, the scrutiny, the criticism that arrived with the early onset of stardom. (Just imagine how most of us would have handled that as a teenager!) An unusual inside look at the rise of sport's hottest young prospect, now poised at the brink of superstardom.