It's the crossover. Sports Illustrators and by Jeff Benedict is a longtime journalist, a former writer with Sports Illustrated, and the author of seventeen books. His latest is Lebron, which really is the definitive biography on one of the most scrutinized athletes in sports history. It's fantastic. I encourage everyone to go out there and pick it up if you want to learn something and learn a lot about Lebron James. And Jeff, let's start with the decision. Why you have chronicled some of the most high profile athletes, most high profile stories in your journalism career, Tiger Woods, Tom Brady, the Patriots Dynasty. Uh tell me about the decision to dig into the life of Lebron James. I wish I could take credit for it being my decision because it was or my idea because it was a great idea. But after doing Tiger Woods, I met with my publisher, Simon Schuster to talk about what I wanted to do next, and what I wanted to do next was the Dynasty, and I made a I thought a great pitch and it was actually accepted, but it was conditional on you know, getting access to the team, which I knew could take a while, and I wanted to get to work, and so they said, well, you know, come up with a different idea while you work on trying to get access to Patriots. And I was like, that is my idea, right. It's hard to come up with good, really great, big box office ideas, and so I said, essentially, why don't you guys see if you can come up with an idea, and they did. They came up with this idea, and my publisher and my editor together and they presented it to me and I thought it was It's one of those things where it was like instantly, the moment you hear it, I don't need to think about it. I don't need to talk to my agent, I don't need to consult with someone, I don't need to do anything. It's just it was one of those things where the minute you heard it, it's sort of like yes, and I said yes in the room. And the other thing about it is if you think about something like that too long, it's sort of like I compare it to looking up at a mountain that's so big that you can't see the top, and you go, do I really want to try to get up there. Maybe not like there's a lot of other things I could do that would be easier. This was, to me, was incredibly hard, challenging, overwhelming. But I think those are good things to feel as a writer. It's never good to be comfortable and satisfied and feeling like, oh, I can do this. It's like rolling off a log I've done at sixteen times now. This is like doing books like this is each each of these is like doing something unprecedented for me that I wondered, like in my heart, like can I really do this? And when I have that feeling, it's like, that's that's the right thing. There's the magazine writer in your Jeff telling your editor you come up with an idea. You could feel that the magazine writer review there. Um, this is an unauthorized biography. And I knew that going into reading it, and yet still I had to kind of double check a couple of times during reading it because there's so much detail. It's so rich in granular details that it just almost feels like you had to have had cooperation it. Um, when you went into this, were you hoping to make it kind of an authorized biography? And what kind of reaction or cooperation did you get from Lebron James. I certainly wasn't hoping for that, and nor was I counting on an interview or interviews or an interview with Lebron. I think those would have been foolish assumptions going into something like this. Unlike the Patriots book, this is not a book about an organization. This is a biography about a living person who's still in the prime of their life. And those kinds of biographies are those are not the most common form of a biography. Most rich biographies are done on people that have passed away and historians come and look back and and this is not that, as was the case with Tiger, not that, and so I actually assumed the opposite, that there would not be any access or interviews. And I'm also okay with that in some ways that makes it a better process as a biographer. It's this is an unvarn look at at his life. And usually when you say that, it means, oh, there's all gonna be all kinds of warts and scandal, And I actually wasn't. Not only was I not looking for those things, I wasn't expecting to find those things, And I don't think that's also what you need for a great narrative. You need a great story. And I just the one assumption I had going in is I don't know what the story is, but it's got to be fantastic, because I know how it started and how it ends. And I just thought, I don't know, but I don't know how he got there, and that's got to be an incredible, jaw dropping narrative. And so I forgot the second part of your question, which was what kind of cooperation, if oh, if any, did you get? And so I mean, and that's another funny word, right, is because most people when they say was it authorized, what they're really asking you is, or a booming is did you talk to him? And there's to me, there's levels of participation or cooperation. And you know, Lebron could have put blockades up and made it really difficult for people that I wanted to talk to, and to my knowledge, he didn't do that. In fact, I know specifically key people that I interviewed for the book who were wonderful sources, but who would not talk to me unless they talked to him first. And you know, and I knew that these were people, that when I called them, I would have been shocked if they didn't do that. That's good protocol for someone you have a relationship with, whether they're your friend or a business colleague, you should do that. And if you've been around long enough, you know that those are they're not hoops that people have to go through. They're just like, that's professional, that's what you should do. And I had people who called me back and said, Okay, I can talk, meaning Lebron didn't stop them. He didn't tell him what to say. He didn't. He just said, basically, that's up to you. And I think saying it's up to you is basically saying, you know, I'm not afraid of you talking to him. And so I had some really great interviews with people who went through that process and then talked to me. I did something unusual in this book that I don't usually do, and that's my source notes are. I put a lot of time into source notes because source notes are to me, are important. They're really important. And my normal protocol is I list the names of everyone I interview in a book, and I usually do it at the front of the source notes, and I usually do it in alphabetical order, like, these are the people I interviewed. I didn't do that in this book. One of the reasons is because a lot of people that I spoke to ask not to be identified, meaning they just they felt uncomfortable being listed as a source. And it's interesting because it's not they didn't say things that were derogatory at all. But I think the concern is, and I again I understand, this is what if this book in the end ends up being something that is unflattering or controversial or any number of things that makes me second guess my decision to have talked to you and have my name in it. And so I told more people than I've ever told that I wouldn't And at the end I realized, Man, I talked to so many people that I can't really name, and so I'm not going to name anybody. But I think when you read the book, it's you can figure out, you know, not in every instance, but there's plenty of cases where you can say, Okay, it's clear who the source is here or here or here. By the intimacy of certain stories, you kind of get the idea. As an author, do you prefer to write this way without kind of direct cooperation from the subject of your book, because obviously cooperation probably makes things a little bit easier. But at the same time, I mean, I know, I kind of like it sometimes if a subject of a story will say no, I don't want to do it, because while it makes it a little bit harder, you're probably getting the whole picture a little bit better that if you were doing it with the subject. Yeah, I love that question. I've done it always, like all kinds of different ways. With Steve Young, you know, he hired me. I literally was commissioned by Steve Young to write his autobiography for him in his voice, So that book's written in first person, and I'm literally working for him. He owns the content, right, he has, you know, editorial control of the manuscript, as he should. He's got his name on it. I've done books like Tiger and Lebron where it's biographies where they're not cooperating, as in sitting down and shaping and sort of saying do this and talk to this person, and you should talk to this guy, and then I've done you know, like the Patriot story. I had access to the team and to a lot of people inside the organization, and I had to earn that, and it took time to build the relationships to be able to do that. And so I've done it from all different ways. And the short answer is which way is better? Well, it depends. It depends what you're writing, who you're dealing with. And I actually thought in Lebron's case, I mean, what writer in the right mind wouldn't want to sit down and have interviews with Lebron? That's a no brainer, it's obvious. However, for what I was doing, I actually thought that it was better this way. And the truth is he didn't have anything to do with what was written on the page. He didn't know what was going to be in the book until it was in the book. And so I mean, nobody can accuse me of saying, well, you were just influenced by Lebron and his guys. No, I wasn't. Actually, I was influenced by the story that I saw unfold in front of my eyes through all the research I did and digging in and trying to figure out what are the touchstone moments in this man's life that I think tied the beats together in his life story, And at the end of the day, I'm you know, it's storytelling, right, It's all about the story and trying to write something that people who think they know everything about Lebron will read and go, wow, there's a lot of stuff here I didn't know, or just when you package it all together so you can see it in its totality and its chronology, you go, Holy mackerel. I never really realized the close proximity of being on the cover of Sports Illustrated and being on ESPN for the first time, and that there's actually a connection between what Grant Wall wrote and the cover story and what Burke Magnus was doing at ESPN to do the programming. There's actually a through point that brings it together when you see that for the first time, Like for me, the light light bulbs were going on, like wow, that's fascinating. Okay, what's the next thing. Yeah, And you wrote about Grant's interaction with Lebron early on there, which was maybe the first, you know, seminal moment for Lebron James where it kind of takes control of his narrative and makes a decision about about how he's going to be covered, kind of on the spot by agreeing to go along with Grant to literally get into his car and do with the story with him. How would packful was that moment for Lebron? I think that that moment was life altering. That's not an overstatement. That chapter called get in the Car. I did a chapter on it because I thought it was foundational for Lebron. It's one of the many times as a very young person, he's not an adult yet. He's a miner who makes a monumental decision, and he makes it in the spur of the moment, and he makes it without any guidance from adults. His mom isn't there, his coach isn't in the decision making process. There's no adult in the room when Grant approaches him in the locker room and makes his pitch. And I was very fortunate to be able to spend some great quality time with Grant. He was actually one of the first people. I can say this. I mean, he was one of the first people that I interviewed for the biography. And there was a reason that I went to Grant early. I just thought the piece he had written was seminole, and I there was a lot of things I wanted to understand about how he went about it. I wanted to know the mechanics and I wanted to get impressions and stuff that wasn't in his peace. And Grant was terrific and he was a great guide post for me when I was literally fumbling around in the dark in the beginning, like what do I do? How do I go about this? And so I was able to develop the Grant piece the way I did, partly because Grant allowed me in there and he trusted me to, you know, kind of open up and just you know, he told me that I loved when he acknowledged he was telling me the story about driving Lebron to the game in Cleveland where the Wizards were playing the Cavaliers, and they're going up to see Michael Jordan, and you know it, it's a huge deal when he when he Lebron says yes, he'll get in the car and go to the game, and Maverick Carter's in the backseat and one of Lebron's other friends and they start driving and the story is all about that. But the way my mind works is I interrupted Grant at while I waited till he finished, and I said, by the way I said was Lebron wearing a seatbelt, and he's like, big pause, and he's like, you know, it's like it's like I can't remember, but he goes, I will tell you this. He goes, he said, I can't remember. And I said, well, were you at all scared that you were driving someone who was frankly worth We're soon going to find out a one hundred million dollars And he said, oh, I was nervous. He said, I was very aware that I was driving this young kid in my car, in a rental car to Cleveland and back. And he said, I better not get in an accident, you know. And I to me, it's stuff like that that I was just curious, right, And you know this half of being a really good writer is having like a lot of curiosity about little details that are that actually everyone can relate to, like a seatbelt. And it gave me a chance as a writer to talk about another writer who was doing something pretty bold and which was driving Lebron and Maverick up to see Michael Jordan play. At the same time, the kid in his car is doing something bold and brave, which is take a chance and get in a car with a stranger and not that there was physical safety issues for Lebron. It's more like, can I really trust this guy to tell my story? I can just see Grant in the right lane of his Toyota camera going like thirty five down the expressways while Lebron is being the DJ in the car poppings and amazing, amazing. One of the great interpersonal relationships of Lebron's life, as with his mother, with Gloria James, who it feels like everything kind of flows from in the life of Lebron James. What did you learn about and how would you characterize kind of their relationship. I think it's a beautiful relationship. And when I say that, that doesn't mean it's a perfect relationship. That doesn't mean there's never been tension or anything. I'm not saying those things. I'm saying that beautiful because hard, hard, hard upbringings can produce real beauty in a relationship like love that's like tested, you know. And that's what I saw here. And I mean I just thought a lot about what the what the sort of conventional narratives were about Lebron and fatherlessness when I started the project, and obviously one of the things I wondered a lot about was how was I going to deal with that? And because I didn't want to just regurgitate what has been said so many times and um, and that's why I said in chapter two, all roads lead back to Akron and Gloria James. For Lebron, I think his roots are like that, his origin story, and Acron is is where the that's where all the gold is. As a biographer, and let me just tell you a funny anecdote to jump back to that because it involves another Sports Illustrated writer, Lee Jenkins, which Lee has the privilege and pleasure of being the guy who comes in later in Lebron's career at Sports Illustrated and writes a series of seminal pieces. But mainly everyone will remember Lee for writing Lebron's essay with him that announced he was going back to Cleveland, every bit as seminal as Grant's original story that launched Lebron into the public space, and the first the first time that I love this scene where the first time Lee Jenkins and Lebron meet is in New York City when Lebron comes to town for a game and they're scheduled to meet at a hotel and you know, Lebron asks him where he's from, and Lie says San Diego, and Lebron says, that's my second favorite city. And Lee says, what's your favorite city? And Lebron, you know, he was looking at him, going, well, Acron, and it's like duh, you know, Lee, Lee has the dumb moment. But the thing I love about that is that's so Lebron, like, of course it's Acron, right, I mean, he has been incredibly He's the kid from Acron. He signs off on Twitter all the time saying that, right. It's he's so proud of where he's come from because that place has made him who he is. And so I think the thing with his mother, the connection of the hard things they went through, the loyalty that they've shown each other over the years, I think is a lot to do, says a lot about who that man is. And it says a lot about the way he fathers his kids and the way he is as a husband. I mean I tried to bring that out through narrative, anecdotes and stories without saying that, but trying to show that. But those are deep, you know, and the fact that one of the primary roots of his family tree is cut off. Is all the more you know, there's all the more binding in the one root that's there. Yeah, you have a sentence, I believe in the first or second chapter about kind of the mystery around his father. And it's one of those kind of unexplored and unknown topics in the life of Lebron James. And it sure sounds like from reading like it's almost a radioactive topic within his own circle, Like in his own family, it's not discussed all that much. How curious were you about that subject specifically and how much did you get to learn about it as you were report in this book? Curious? Um, But here's the thing, and I think this what we all bring our own You know, baggage isn't the right word in this case, but I'm using that word in reference to my own situation. But I have a different perspective on that whole thing. And here's why. Like I my mother got pregnant with me when she was a teenager and wasn't married, and so for a long time I had no absolutely no connection to my father. He was not a part of my life. And you know, I remember the questions like from other kids and stuff because you know, I went to a school where I think everybody was their parents were married, you know, and there's definitely a stigma that I felt grown up and in the early years when I didn't have a dad and all my other friends had dads. You know, I go sleep at someone's house, there's dad. Come to my house and sleep over, there's no dad. And so my perspective is this that it wasn't until I was in my forties that I started to understand and learn why my mother kept information from me about my dad and I what I know is this, like there's and that's why I dedicated the book to my dad. Biological dat is that I realized, as an older man, when I was more mature, that there were reasons that there was stuff I didn't know when I was a kid, and a lot of things I was bitter about and pissed off about was misguided. It didn't seem misguided when I was young, but as an adult, I realized, Wow, it's just there's just stuff. There's a reason that some of this stuff is buried deep, and it's probably better off that way. And so as a journalist and a biographer, I approached this with that perspective in my mind, and it's an understanding, and so I tried to do justice to the subject matter, but I tried to be respectful because these are sensitive areas and their people's personal not just personalized, but these are like the most important parts of their personal lives, and I just, you know, So I treaded into that territory with the background that I came from and tried to keep that as a guide post, because if one came in and judged my mom right now for stuff that went on forty five years ago, it probably wouldn't be pretty, but it also wouldn't be fair, and so I didn't want to do that. So you get through Lebron's early years in high school and then first pick of the draft and first seven years in the NBA, you get to the finals, multiple MVPs, it's just one steady ascent, it feels like. Then you get to twenty ten and the decision, and for the very first time in Lebron's life, really he faces backlash. He faces negativity not just from Dan Gilbert and the people in Cleveland, but nationally. I mean, you think about it. Media was probably guilty of it because they voted Derek Rose the MVP that year. What the reality is Lebron probably deserved it. If he had been playing in Cleveland, he probably would have won MVP. The decision and those months that followed, we know about it, But what impact did you learn about? What kind of a hat on Lebron moving forward? I mean, I describe it as hatred, right. I mean, the first chapter of this book opens in the Decision, right, and I chose to start there for a lot of reasons. But the backlash is mean spirited, it's it's brutal, and look, there were missteps, and it's easy to forget now that Lebron was twenty five years old when when he made the decision. And so what I'd like to do is say to people, Okay, think about the biggest decisions you made in your life at twenty five, Like what was the significance of those, right? And think about how many stupid things you did when you were just twenty five, partly just because you didn't understand the world yet, right, and so you stepped in a lot of things, but it didn't really matter because the world wasn't watching you make dumb decisions. And I think, and I'm not saying this was a dumb decision, but I'm also saying this wasn't. This wasn't as carefully planned out out as a lot of the things that Lebron has done, and he paid a price for it. And his guys knew that they could have done this better, and they could have done it differently and probably should have and all that. But I think what it did for Lebron was it. You know, he goes to Miami and he is the villain not only the NBA, but he's the villain of American sports, and everybody loves it. When they lose to Dallas in the NBA Finals after his first season in Miami, the entire NBA is rooting against the Miami Heat, except for the people in Miami. I mean, everybody is rooting for Dallas. And when Dallas wins, it's like, this is a chance to really stomp on Lebron and for what he did. And I think that that is the It's clearly the low point. It's the darkest period of his career. You know, he goes into this like cocoon. It's it's the fact that he comes out of it and does what he did. That's when he becomes scary Lebron. Right after that, people are afraid to get on the court with Lebron, and you know, God bless people like Kendrick Perkins who are willing to admit it. Most guys won't, but they were. But I think that dark period in the degree of hatred being the villain going into stadiums were like in Cleveland the first time he played there and people were literally I mean that, you just have to watch the video with the audio on. It's like, Wow, this is American sports. We've gotten to this. I was there. I was there for that that first game back. I have never, even to this day, never experienced that kind of victual It dwarfed what Kevin Durant received when he came back to Oklahoma City. Nothing like that. Nothing. And so I think that for Lebron as a writer and a biographer, why do I like that moment. It's not because it's a likable moment. It's because this is what gives you great It gives you tension, but it also allows you to really show the character of the subject that you're writing about. How does he deal with this? What does he do with it? It could ruin you, It could crush him. It could have sent him into a spiral that maybe he's never never rises to the level of a great basketball player. Again, I mean, so much of this is mental and emotional, right. We've read countless stories and you've written about this. We've we've witnessed athletes who when they lose it here, all those physical gifts go away. They're suddenly not as sharp as it used to be. That is not what happens to him. He doesn't abandon his family. He in fact, he gravitates tighter right, that circle around him gets more tight knit. And so I love that moment because it's like this is it's like a refiner's fire. And the way he comes out of it is I know someone else who loved this moment as pat Riley, because the Lebron that came out of that is like, Okay, we can just clear the decks because we're about to win some titles. Motivated, motivated Lebron came out of that and he learned from it as well. Of being twenty fourteen, his essay with Lee was as well executed as it possibly could have been even twenty eighteen, just tweeting that he's leaving and going to the Lakers. That was pretty well executed at that time. So whatever mistakes he's made, he's learned from. And look, you think about Jeff, that's the only real mistake if you want to call it that, that you can attach to him. Like you wrote about Tiger Woods, who obviously has had so many demons in his life. It has had so many missteps along the way. When when we look back at the twenty years Lebron has been in the NBA, the twenty five years been on our radar, that's it, Like, that's really it. I mean, it's almost inexplicable that a guy who you know, whether it's Tiger or Sam, these are the two bo scrutinized athletes when it comes to social media and everything else in the history of sports, that this guy, all you can point to is a TV show that kind of sucked, that still raised a lot of money for kids in the Boys and Girls club in that area. And YESBN will always remind you and we had thirteen million viewers at night. But that's it, right, Like I mean, it's it's it's remarkable, you know, and it speaks to his character. I think that he's you know, yeah, gone, this way and bend this solid. I think so. And I to me, having written about a lot of athletes over the course of twenty five years, I think, to me, what's more impressive than Lebron's basketball? And that's kind of hard to top. But to have as much fame, celebrity and power. Lebron has a lot of power, a lot of power. He you could get away with a lot and he doesn't do that. And to me, that is far more impressive than the breaking the scoring record, as impressive as that of his. I mean, to have that much latitude in your life that you can pretty much do whatever you want. And I've always said that you can. You can define a man by what he does in his discretionary time when he can do whatever he wants and nobody's watching. And what does Lebron do. Usually he's with his kids somewhere, you know, on a basketball court in the backyard at a high school game. But that's the kind of stuff that Lebron does in his discretionary time when nobody's watching. And I mean in his case, even when he does that, someone's got their cell phone out and taking a video or whatever. But that's his life and it has served him really, really well because so many of the trip wires and land mines that this for celebrities and people with that kind of fame haven't tripped him up because he doesn't. He doesn't go near them. That's why he's building schools and putting kids through college and doing it. And I would say a relatively low profile away if you can believe that, he's not out there touting it every fifteen minutes. He's just going about his business. The last couple of things for you, if if there was one, you know, chapter or storyline that you were writing about that you wish you could have gotten more or something from Lebron that you could have picked his branding on, what would be that one area of the writing that you wish you had his cooperation? H I I'm fumbling around because I haven't really thought about that. UM. I mean maybe just actually, I'm gonna take away from the personal for a minute. You know, probably, I guess what I'd say probably is because I think it's so interesting is his relationship with his wife, because I think it's I wish I could have done more with that. I did it as much as I could. But one of my one of the scenes that I like a lot in the book is when he is riding in a car with Kevin Durant late in their careers, so it's near the end of the book, and and and Kevin is asking him questions about how he does it, like being a dad with three kids and he's married and all this, and he's just the greatest player, right and balancing it all and and Lebron starts talking about that, and I think to me that part of Lebron's life is so instructional for so many people, black and white, rich and poor, young and old. His relationship with his wife is Look, marriage is hard enough right when you when you wrap it and fame and wealth and all the stuff that comes with being a celebrated athlete on the scale that he is. That just adds levels of complexity to marriage and relationships that most people can't even relate to. And so I think that's probably the area, like if I had a crystal ball and could just see, like that's the one thing I'd like to go to, it would probably be that, just because I think there's probably a lot more there that would benefit a lot of people to learn no more about It's tremendous book. The book is Lebron. It is available Tuesday everywhere. Jeff phenomenal. If these kinds of biographies did it again with Lebron, I can say this. I'm just gonna guess here, but our good friend Lee Jenkins, who I think someday is probably gonna be the one that writes the book with Lebron, like cooperates with them. I can guarantee you that Lee is already sweating a little bit somewhere in that Los Angeles Clippers front office. He's trying to think of, right, how do I do this differently? How do I do this better than Jeff did with that book. I'm just gonna guess Lee's doing that well. I can think of a lot of ways. And Lisle's a a great writer and uh and Lebron's hell of a storyteller in his own right, so he doesn't need to. Jeff. I appreciate the time, good luck with the book. Thank you,

It's the crossover. Sports Illustrators and by Jeff Benedict is a longtime journalist, a former writer with Sports Illustrated, and the author of seventeen books. His latest is Lebron, which really is the definitive biography on one of the most scrutinized athletes in sports history. It's fantastic. I encourage everyone to go out there and pick it up if you want to learn something and learn a lot about Lebron James. And Jeff, let's start with the decision. Why you have chronicled some of the most high profile athletes, most high profile stories in your journalism career, Tiger Woods, Tom Brady, the Patriots Dynasty. Uh tell me about the decision to dig into the life of Lebron James. I wish I could take credit for it being my decision because it was or my idea because it was a great idea. But after doing Tiger Woods, I met with my publisher, Simon Schuster to talk about what I wanted to do next, and what I wanted to do next was the Dynasty, and I made a I thought a great pitch and it was actually accepted, but it was conditional on you know, getting access to the team, which I knew could take a while, and I wanted to get to work, and so they said, well, you know, come up with a different idea while you work on trying to get access to Patriots. And I was like, that is my idea, right. It's hard to come up with good, really great, big box office ideas, and so I said, essentially, why don't you guys see if you can come up with an idea, and they did. They came up with this idea, and my publisher and my editor together and they presented it to me and I thought it was It's one of those things where it was like instantly, the moment you hear it, I don't need to think about it. I don't need to talk to my agent, I don't need to consult with someone, I don't need to do anything. It's just it was one of those things where the minute you heard it, it's sort of like yes, and I said yes in the room. And the other thing about it is if you think about something like that too long, it's sort of like I compare it to looking up at a mountain that's so big that you can't see the top, and you go, do I really want to try to get up there. Maybe not like there's a lot of other things I could do that would be easier. This was, to me, was incredibly hard, challenging, overwhelming. But I think those are good things to feel as a writer. It's never good to be comfortable and satisfied and feeling like, oh, I can do this. It's like rolling off a log I've done at sixteen times now. This is like doing books like this is each each of these is like doing something unprecedented for me that I wondered, like in my heart, like can I really do this? And when I have that feeling, it's like, that's that's the right thing. There's the magazine writer in your Jeff telling your editor you come up with an idea. You could feel that the magazine writer review there. Um, this is an unauthorized biography. And I knew that going into reading it, and yet still I had to kind of double check a couple of times during reading it because there's so much detail. It's so rich in granular details that it just almost feels like you had to have had cooperation it. Um, when you went into this, were you hoping to make it kind of an authorized biography? And what kind of reaction or cooperation did you get from Lebron James. I certainly wasn't hoping for that, and nor was I counting on an interview or interviews or an interview with Lebron. I think those would have been foolish assumptions going into something like this. Unlike the Patriots book, this is not a book about an organization. This is a biography about a living person who's still in the prime of their life. And those kinds of biographies are those are not the most common form of a biography. Most rich biographies are done on people that have passed away and historians come and look back and and this is not that, as was the case with Tiger, not that, and so I actually assumed the opposite, that there would not be any access or interviews. And I'm also okay with that in some ways that makes it a better process as a biographer. It's this is an unvarn look at at his life. And usually when you say that, it means, oh, there's all gonna be all kinds of warts and scandal, And I actually wasn't. Not only was I not looking for those things, I wasn't expecting to find those things, And I don't think that's also what you need for a great narrative. You need a great story. And I just the one assumption I had going in is I don't know what the story is, but it's got to be fantastic, because I know how it started and how it ends. And I just thought, I don't know, but I don't know how he got there, and that's got to be an incredible, jaw dropping narrative. And so I forgot the second part of your question, which was what kind of cooperation, if oh, if any, did you get? And so I mean, and that's another funny word, right, is because most people when they say was it authorized, what they're really asking you is, or a booming is did you talk to him? And there's to me, there's levels of participation or cooperation. And you know, Lebron could have put blockades up and made it really difficult for people that I wanted to talk to, and to my knowledge, he didn't do that. In fact, I know specifically key people that I interviewed for the book who were wonderful sources, but who would not talk to me unless they talked to him first. And you know, and I knew that these were people, that when I called them, I would have been shocked if they didn't do that. That's good protocol for someone you have a relationship with, whether they're your friend or a business colleague, you should do that. And if you've been around long enough, you know that those are they're not hoops that people have to go through. They're just like, that's professional, that's what you should do. And I had people who called me back and said, Okay, I can talk, meaning Lebron didn't stop them. He didn't tell him what to say. He didn't. He just said, basically, that's up to you. And I think saying it's up to you is basically saying, you know, I'm not afraid of you talking to him. And so I had some really great interviews with people who went through that process and then talked to me. I did something unusual in this book that I don't usually do, and that's my source notes are. I put a lot of time into source notes because source notes are to me, are important. They're really important. And my normal protocol is I list the names of everyone I interview in a book, and I usually do it at the front of the source notes, and I usually do it in alphabetical order, like, these are the people I interviewed. I didn't do that in this book. One of the reasons is because a lot of people that I spoke to ask not to be identified, meaning they just they felt uncomfortable being listed as a source. And it's interesting because it's not they didn't say things that were derogatory at all. But I think the concern is, and I again I understand, this is what if this book in the end ends up being something that is unflattering or controversial or any number of things that makes me second guess my decision to have talked to you and have my name in it. And so I told more people than I've ever told that I wouldn't And at the end I realized, Man, I talked to so many people that I can't really name, and so I'm not going to name anybody. But I think when you read the book, it's you can figure out, you know, not in every instance, but there's plenty of cases where you can say, Okay, it's clear who the source is here or here or here. By the intimacy of certain stories, you kind of get the idea. As an author, do you prefer to write this way without kind of direct cooperation from the subject of your book, because obviously cooperation probably makes things a little bit easier. But at the same time, I mean, I know, I kind of like it sometimes if a subject of a story will say no, I don't want to do it, because while it makes it a little bit harder, you're probably getting the whole picture a little bit better that if you were doing it with the subject. Yeah, I love that question. I've done it always, like all kinds of different ways. With Steve Young, you know, he hired me. I literally was commissioned by Steve Young to write his autobiography for him in his voice, So that book's written in first person, and I'm literally working for him. He owns the content, right, he has, you know, editorial control of the manuscript, as he should. He's got his name on it. I've done books like Tiger and Lebron where it's biographies where they're not cooperating, as in sitting down and shaping and sort of saying do this and talk to this person, and you should talk to this guy, and then I've done you know, like the Patriot story. I had access to the team and to a lot of people inside the organization, and I had to earn that, and it took time to build the relationships to be able to do that. And so I've done it from all different ways. And the short answer is which way is better? Well, it depends. It depends what you're writing, who you're dealing with. And I actually thought in Lebron's case, I mean, what writer in the right mind wouldn't want to sit down and have interviews with Lebron? That's a no brainer, it's obvious. However, for what I was doing, I actually thought that it was better this way. And the truth is he didn't have anything to do with what was written on the page. He didn't know what was going to be in the book until it was in the book. And so I mean, nobody can accuse me of saying, well, you were just influenced by Lebron and his guys. No, I wasn't. Actually, I was influenced by the story that I saw unfold in front of my eyes through all the research I did and digging in and trying to figure out what are the touchstone moments in this man's life that I think tied the beats together in his life story, And at the end of the day, I'm you know, it's storytelling, right, It's all about the story and trying to write something that people who think they know everything about Lebron will read and go, wow, there's a lot of stuff here I didn't know, or just when you package it all together so you can see it in its totality and its chronology, you go, Holy mackerel. I never really realized the close proximity of being on the cover of Sports Illustrated and being on ESPN for the first time, and that there's actually a connection between what Grant Wall wrote and the cover story and what Burke Magnus was doing at ESPN to do the programming. There's actually a through point that brings it together when you see that for the first time, Like for me, the light light bulbs were going on, like wow, that's fascinating. Okay, what's the next thing. Yeah, And you wrote about Grant's interaction with Lebron early on there, which was maybe the first, you know, seminal moment for Lebron James where it kind of takes control of his narrative and makes a decision about about how he's going to be covered, kind of on the spot by agreeing to go along with Grant to literally get into his car and do with the story with him. How would packful was that moment for Lebron? I think that that moment was life altering. That's not an overstatement. That chapter called get in the Car. I did a chapter on it because I thought it was foundational for Lebron. It's one of the many times as a very young person, he's not an adult yet. He's a miner who makes a monumental decision, and he makes it in the spur of the moment, and he makes it without any guidance from adults. His mom isn't there, his coach isn't in the decision making process. There's no adult in the room when Grant approaches him in the locker room and makes his pitch. And I was very fortunate to be able to spend some great quality time with Grant. He was actually one of the first people. I can say this. I mean, he was one of the first people that I interviewed for the biography. And there was a reason that I went to Grant early. I just thought the piece he had written was seminole, and I there was a lot of things I wanted to understand about how he went about it. I wanted to know the mechanics and I wanted to get impressions and stuff that wasn't in his peace. And Grant was terrific and he was a great guide post for me when I was literally fumbling around in the dark in the beginning, like what do I do? How do I go about this? And so I was able to develop the Grant piece the way I did, partly because Grant allowed me in there and he trusted me to, you know, kind of open up and just you know, he told me that I loved when he acknowledged he was telling me the story about driving Lebron to the game in Cleveland where the Wizards were playing the Cavaliers, and they're going up to see Michael Jordan, and you know it, it's a huge deal when he when he Lebron says yes, he'll get in the car and go to the game, and Maverick Carter's in the backseat and one of Lebron's other friends and they start driving and the story is all about that. But the way my mind works is I interrupted Grant at while I waited till he finished, and I said, by the way I said was Lebron wearing a seatbelt, and he's like, big pause, and he's like, you know, it's like it's like I can't remember, but he goes, I will tell you this. He goes, he said, I can't remember. And I said, well, were you at all scared that you were driving someone who was frankly worth We're soon going to find out a one hundred million dollars And he said, oh, I was nervous. He said, I was very aware that I was driving this young kid in my car, in a rental car to Cleveland and back. And he said, I better not get in an accident, you know. And I to me, it's stuff like that that I was just curious, right, And you know this half of being a really good writer is having like a lot of curiosity about little details that are that actually everyone can relate to, like a seatbelt. And it gave me a chance as a writer to talk about another writer who was doing something pretty bold and which was driving Lebron and Maverick up to see Michael Jordan play. At the same time, the kid in his car is doing something bold and brave, which is take a chance and get in a car with a stranger and not that there was physical safety issues for Lebron. It's more like, can I really trust this guy to tell my story? I can just see Grant in the right lane of his Toyota camera going like thirty five down the expressways while Lebron is being the DJ in the car poppings and amazing, amazing. One of the great interpersonal relationships of Lebron's life, as with his mother, with Gloria James, who it feels like everything kind of flows from in the life of Lebron James. What did you learn about and how would you characterize kind of their relationship. I think it's a beautiful relationship. And when I say that, that doesn't mean it's a perfect relationship. That doesn't mean there's never been tension or anything. I'm not saying those things. I'm saying that beautiful because hard, hard, hard upbringings can produce real beauty in a relationship like love that's like tested, you know. And that's what I saw here. And I mean I just thought a lot about what the what the sort of conventional narratives were about Lebron and fatherlessness when I started the project, and obviously one of the things I wondered a lot about was how was I going to deal with that? And because I didn't want to just regurgitate what has been said so many times and um, and that's why I said in chapter two, all roads lead back to Akron and Gloria James. For Lebron, I think his roots are like that, his origin story, and Acron is is where the that's where all the gold is. As a biographer, and let me just tell you a funny anecdote to jump back to that because it involves another Sports Illustrated writer, Lee Jenkins, which Lee has the privilege and pleasure of being the guy who comes in later in Lebron's career at Sports Illustrated and writes a series of seminal pieces. But mainly everyone will remember Lee for writing Lebron's essay with him that announced he was going back to Cleveland, every bit as seminal as Grant's original story that launched Lebron into the public space, and the first the first time that I love this scene where the first time Lee Jenkins and Lebron meet is in New York City when Lebron comes to town for a game and they're scheduled to meet at a hotel and you know, Lebron asks him where he's from, and Lie says San Diego, and Lebron says, that's my second favorite city. And Lee says, what's your favorite city? And Lebron, you know, he was looking at him, going, well, Acron, and it's like duh, you know, Lee, Lee has the dumb moment. But the thing I love about that is that's so Lebron, like, of course it's Acron, right, I mean, he has been incredibly He's the kid from Acron. He signs off on Twitter all the time saying that, right. It's he's so proud of where he's come from because that place has made him who he is. And so I think the thing with his mother, the connection of the hard things they went through, the loyalty that they've shown each other over the years, I think is a lot to do, says a lot about who that man is. And it says a lot about the way he fathers his kids and the way he is as a husband. I mean I tried to bring that out through narrative, anecdotes and stories without saying that, but trying to show that. But those are deep, you know, and the fact that one of the primary roots of his family tree is cut off. Is all the more you know, there's all the more binding in the one root that's there. Yeah, you have a sentence, I believe in the first or second chapter about kind of the mystery around his father. And it's one of those kind of unexplored and unknown topics in the life of Lebron James. And it sure sounds like from reading like it's almost a radioactive topic within his own circle, Like in his own family, it's not discussed all that much. How curious were you about that subject specifically and how much did you get to learn about it as you were report in this book? Curious? Um, But here's the thing, and I think this what we all bring our own You know, baggage isn't the right word in this case, but I'm using that word in reference to my own situation. But I have a different perspective on that whole thing. And here's why. Like I my mother got pregnant with me when she was a teenager and wasn't married, and so for a long time I had no absolutely no connection to my father. He was not a part of my life. And you know, I remember the questions like from other kids and stuff because you know, I went to a school where I think everybody was their parents were married, you know, and there's definitely a stigma that I felt grown up and in the early years when I didn't have a dad and all my other friends had dads. You know, I go sleep at someone's house, there's dad. Come to my house and sleep over, there's no dad. And so my perspective is this that it wasn't until I was in my forties that I started to understand and learn why my mother kept information from me about my dad and I what I know is this, like there's and that's why I dedicated the book to my dad. Biological dat is that I realized, as an older man, when I was more mature, that there were reasons that there was stuff I didn't know when I was a kid, and a lot of things I was bitter about and pissed off about was misguided. It didn't seem misguided when I was young, but as an adult, I realized, Wow, it's just there's just stuff. There's a reason that some of this stuff is buried deep, and it's probably better off that way. And so as a journalist and a biographer, I approached this with that perspective in my mind, and it's an understanding, and so I tried to do justice to the subject matter, but I tried to be respectful because these are sensitive areas and their people's personal not just personalized, but these are like the most important parts of their personal lives, and I just, you know, So I treaded into that territory with the background that I came from and tried to keep that as a guide post, because if one came in and judged my mom right now for stuff that went on forty five years ago, it probably wouldn't be pretty, but it also wouldn't be fair, and so I didn't want to do that. So you get through Lebron's early years in high school and then first pick of the draft and first seven years in the NBA, you get to the finals, multiple MVPs, it's just one steady ascent, it feels like. Then you get to twenty ten and the decision, and for the very first time in Lebron's life, really he faces backlash. He faces negativity not just from Dan Gilbert and the people in Cleveland, but nationally. I mean, you think about it. Media was probably guilty of it because they voted Derek Rose the MVP that year. What the reality is Lebron probably deserved it. If he had been playing in Cleveland, he probably would have won MVP. The decision and those months that followed, we know about it, But what impact did you learn about? What kind of a hat on Lebron moving forward? I mean, I describe it as hatred, right. I mean, the first chapter of this book opens in the Decision, right, and I chose to start there for a lot of reasons. But the backlash is mean spirited, it's it's brutal, and look, there were missteps, and it's easy to forget now that Lebron was twenty five years old when when he made the decision. And so what I'd like to do is say to people, Okay, think about the biggest decisions you made in your life at twenty five, Like what was the significance of those, right? And think about how many stupid things you did when you were just twenty five, partly just because you didn't understand the world yet, right, and so you stepped in a lot of things, but it didn't really matter because the world wasn't watching you make dumb decisions. And I think, and I'm not saying this was a dumb decision, but I'm also saying this wasn't. This wasn't as carefully planned out out as a lot of the things that Lebron has done, and he paid a price for it. And his guys knew that they could have done this better, and they could have done it differently and probably should have and all that. But I think what it did for Lebron was it. You know, he goes to Miami and he is the villain not only the NBA, but he's the villain of American sports, and everybody loves it. When they lose to Dallas in the NBA Finals after his first season in Miami, the entire NBA is rooting against the Miami Heat, except for the people in Miami. I mean, everybody is rooting for Dallas. And when Dallas wins, it's like, this is a chance to really stomp on Lebron and for what he did. And I think that that is the It's clearly the low point. It's the darkest period of his career. You know, he goes into this like cocoon. It's it's the fact that he comes out of it and does what he did. That's when he becomes scary Lebron. Right after that, people are afraid to get on the court with Lebron, and you know, God bless people like Kendrick Perkins who are willing to admit it. Most guys won't, but they were. But I think that dark period in the degree of hatred being the villain going into stadiums were like in Cleveland the first time he played there and people were literally I mean that, you just have to watch the video with the audio on. It's like, Wow, this is American sports. We've gotten to this. I was there. I was there for that that first game back. I have never, even to this day, never experienced that kind of victual It dwarfed what Kevin Durant received when he came back to Oklahoma City. Nothing like that. Nothing. And so I think that for Lebron as a writer and a biographer, why do I like that moment. It's not because it's a likable moment. It's because this is what gives you great It gives you tension, but it also allows you to really show the character of the subject that you're writing about. How does he deal with this? What does he do with it? It could ruin you, It could crush him. It could have sent him into a spiral that maybe he's never never rises to the level of a great basketball player. Again, I mean, so much of this is mental and emotional, right. We've read countless stories and you've written about this. We've we've witnessed athletes who when they lose it here, all those physical gifts go away. They're suddenly not as sharp as it used to be. That is not what happens to him. He doesn't abandon his family. He in fact, he gravitates tighter right, that circle around him gets more tight knit. And so I love that moment because it's like this is it's like a refiner's fire. And the way he comes out of it is I know someone else who loved this moment as pat Riley, because the Lebron that came out of that is like, Okay, we can just clear the decks because we're about to win some titles. Motivated, motivated Lebron came out of that and he learned from it as well. Of being twenty fourteen, his essay with Lee was as well executed as it possibly could have been even twenty eighteen, just tweeting that he's leaving and going to the Lakers. That was pretty well executed at that time. So whatever mistakes he's made, he's learned from. And look, you think about Jeff, that's the only real mistake if you want to call it that, that you can attach to him. Like you wrote about Tiger Woods, who obviously has had so many demons in his life. It has had so many missteps along the way. When when we look back at the twenty years Lebron has been in the NBA, the twenty five years been on our radar, that's it, Like, that's really it. I mean, it's almost inexplicable that a guy who you know, whether it's Tiger or Sam, these are the two bo scrutinized athletes when it comes to social media and everything else in the history of sports, that this guy, all you can point to is a TV show that kind of sucked, that still raised a lot of money for kids in the Boys and Girls club in that area. And YESBN will always remind you and we had thirteen million viewers at night. But that's it, right, Like I mean, it's it's it's remarkable, you know, and it speaks to his character. I think that he's you know, yeah, gone, this way and bend this solid. I think so. And I to me, having written about a lot of athletes over the course of twenty five years, I think, to me, what's more impressive than Lebron's basketball? And that's kind of hard to top. But to have as much fame, celebrity and power. Lebron has a lot of power, a lot of power. He you could get away with a lot and he doesn't do that. And to me, that is far more impressive than the breaking the scoring record, as impressive as that of his. I mean, to have that much latitude in your life that you can pretty much do whatever you want. And I've always said that you can. You can define a man by what he does in his discretionary time when he can do whatever he wants and nobody's watching. And what does Lebron do. Usually he's with his kids somewhere, you know, on a basketball court in the backyard at a high school game. But that's the kind of stuff that Lebron does in his discretionary time when nobody's watching. And I mean in his case, even when he does that, someone's got their cell phone out and taking a video or whatever. But that's his life and it has served him really, really well because so many of the trip wires and land mines that this for celebrities and people with that kind of fame haven't tripped him up because he doesn't. He doesn't go near them. That's why he's building schools and putting kids through college and doing it. And I would say a relatively low profile away if you can believe that, he's not out there touting it every fifteen minutes. He's just going about his business. The last couple of things for you, if if there was one, you know, chapter or storyline that you were writing about that you wish you could have gotten more or something from Lebron that you could have picked his branding on, what would be that one area of the writing that you wish you had his cooperation? H I I'm fumbling around because I haven't really thought about that. UM. I mean maybe just actually, I'm gonna take away from the personal for a minute. You know, probably, I guess what I'd say probably is because I think it's so interesting is his relationship with his wife, because I think it's I wish I could have done more with that. I did it as much as I could. But one of my one of the scenes that I like a lot in the book is when he is riding in a car with Kevin Durant late in their careers, so it's near the end of the book, and and and Kevin is asking him questions about how he does it, like being a dad with three kids and he's married and all this, and he's just the greatest player, right and balancing it all and and Lebron starts talking about that, and I think to me that part of Lebron's life is so instructional for so many people, black and white, rich and poor, young and old. His relationship with his wife is Look, marriage is hard enough right when you when you wrap it and fame and wealth and all the stuff that comes with being a celebrated athlete on the scale that he is. That just adds levels of complexity to marriage and relationships that most people can't even relate to. And so I think that's probably the area, like if I had a crystal ball and could just see, like that's the one thing I'd like to go to, it would probably be that, just because I think there's probably a lot more there that would benefit a lot of people to learn no more about It's tremendous book. The book is Lebron. It is available Tuesday everywhere. Jeff phenomenal. If these kinds of biographies did it again with Lebron, I can say this. I'm just gonna guess here, but our good friend Lee Jenkins, who I think someday is probably gonna be the one that writes the book with Lebron, like cooperates with them. I can guarantee you that Lee is already sweating a little bit somewhere in that Los Angeles Clippers front office. He's trying to think of, right, how do I do this differently? How do I do this better than Jeff did with that book. I'm just gonna guess Lee's doing that well. I can think of a lot of ways. And Lisle's a a great writer and uh and Lebron's hell of a storyteller in his own right, so he doesn't need to. Jeff. I appreciate the time, good luck with the book. Thank you,