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LeBron James

How Akron differs from Cleveland on LeBron James

Martin Rogers
USA TODAY Sports

LeBron James and Sprite opened two refurbished basketball courts at Akron's Patterson Park in September.

AKRON, Ohio — In Cleveland, the success of basketball's most celebrated homecoming will be judged by one lofty goal — whether LeBron James can end a half-century drought and set off a championship party for the ages in rock and roll's birthplace.

Yet dip south on I-77 from the shores of Lake Erie to Akron, where James took his formative steps in life and basketball, and the view of its famous son runs deeper than points, wins and rings, and hinges more on intangibles such as hope and belief.

The hometown team and the hometown 40 miles away are often merged in the public's eye, but they are different when it comes to James.

"There were people that hated LeBron in Cleveland for leaving," says Keith Dambrot, who coached James in his first two years at St. Vincent-St. Mary High School and has spent the past 13 coaching at the University of Akron. "They never hated him here."

Dambrot's office wall at the university is adorned with plaques and photos of that unreal time more than a decade ago a 16-year-old with generational gifts was already emblazoned on national magazine covers and compared to the all-time greats.

The hype turned out to be real of course, with two Olympic gold medals, 10 All-Star appearances, two NBA championships with the Miami Heat — after that controversial televised Decision — and his inclusion among the best ever safely stashed in his career portfolio.

Yet James' real legacy here is broad, etched not in titles or accolades but in these grizzled streets where the 29-year-old icon is not known as "King James." Here the chatter is just of "Bron," the kid who emerged through it all, from the same difficult upbringing with real challenges in a town blighted by the struggles of the automotive and rubber industries.

"Cleveland thinks it has a sports curse. But Akron, well, Akron has a life curse. Hard times, hard lives," says local Rodney Rice, 50, down by the Perkins Pool courts, where throngs would huddle to watch a young James school older challengers in pick-up games.

"That's why him coming back means something different to us. It is not about him getting Cleveland a championship, but a new reminder to the kids here that a person can make it big in life having walked these same streets."

Local hoopsters still strut their game at Perkins, and at Hawkins Court, where the best ballers play until darkness falls. A mile up the hill is Buchtel High, where LeBron met a pretty cheerleader called Savannah Brinson, and got a date with the woman who years later would become his wife. Down a lane, by the train tracks, is a James memory that didn't survive the test of time — 439 Hickory Street — home for part of his early childhood but long since bulldozed.

And, sadly, there is also the abandoned specter that was Rolling Acres Mall, where James and his high school teammates — Sian Cotton, Dru Joyce III, Romeo Travis and Willie McGee — would occasionally hang out and catch a movie, now closed for years and awaiting the wrecking ball.

Akron feels like a place waiting for something really good to happen. This summer, on July 11, it did.

JAMES 'AN UNDERDOG'

For Akronites, the most important part of James' return to the Cavaliers isn't about how he might mesh with Kevin Love or whether he'll energize Kyrie Irving and Dion Waiters, it is just the simple affirmation of what they believed, that he had never forgotten his roots and was still one of them.

"People are walking a little taller," Dambrot said. "They see it for what it is. To them LeBron is not an entertainer or a celebrity, he is a person who came through the same things they did and found a path. It is great for the city. Hope is a powerful thing."

James' fiscal contribution to neighborhood projects benefitting the area's young and needy are many but for most his greatest legacy has been that he has stayed connected.

Spend a few days in Akron and you realize it is a city that is honest to a fault. No one tries to paint over the problems, or makes blustering promises that they can be eradicated easily, or swiftly.

"Drugs, crime and poverty are issues here," said Desiree Bolden, who runs Wheels For Education, an extended learning program aimed at third-graders and inspired by the LeBron James Family Foundation. "Kids face instability, moving around from place to place. LeBron didn't have an easy upbringing either, he knows what it is like to have it tough. That's why the foundation work he does is personal to him."

James missed more than 100 days of school in the fourth grade and the challenges of single motherhood tested his mom Gloria to the point that he spent time living with the family of his Pee Wee football coach Frank Walker. The Walker family's son, Frankie Jr., is still a close friend and business partner of James.

Even with NBA scouts taking in St. Vincent's games as early as James' sophomore year and a pro career seemingly certain, Dambrot always worried that the incredible potential could be sunk if his phenom got caught up with the wrong crowd, found the attention too much, or began to waver.

"Most out of everything I am proud of him for, is that he was strong enough to not only see it through but to stay true to who he is," Dambrot said. "He is an underdog, even though he might not look like it. And he likes underdogs. That is how he sees Akron, these are his kind of people."

'NEVER TRULY LEFT'

If there was a worry that LeBron was no longer LeBron, that he had become too big-time, it was fleeting. The manner of the South Beach-bound departure from the Cavaliers in 2010, by means of a theatric ESPN production, did not sit easy.

But when it came down to it, while Cleveland seethed, Akron accepted it, their devotion to one of their own deeper than that to the sports team from the big city up the road.

"There have been tremendous up and down swings in the way Clevelanders treated LeBron," Akron Mayor Don Plusquellic told USA TODAY Sports. "You could say the way they treated him that they didn't deserve for him to come back, but he put all that past him.

"To me, it was a situation where a young man, like many young men and women, found a better work opportunity somewhere else and decided to move away. That happens all the time, but not everyone gets called all the names under the sun for it."

A common theme heard about James is his loyalty, and his willingness to take constructive criticism, honestly given.

"I didn't like the way he left and I told him that," said Barb Wood, long-time librarian at St Vincent's, a confidante for James in high school when the quiet of the library provided a welcome respite from the incessant attention.

"But he learns from his mistakes and he is down to earth and humble enough to accept that. He has grown into such an impressive man but in that way, despite everything, he is still the same, sweet boy that he ever was. The funny thing is, when people say he is coming back, I say he never truly left. He is known all over the world, but he has remained true to where he came from."

Just like Wood, Dambrot has enough of James' respect to have no hesitation about telling him how it is. After the Heat's 2010 Finals defeat to Dallas, Dambrot forcefully told his former charge that he had to accept not being liked, had to fight through it, just like he told him to at St Vincent's when things didn't automatically fall into place.

That is a quality that can be appreciated by a new generation of Akron fans, even those too young to remember the glory days of the high school Irish.

A few miles from center of the city, Keith Burkett is an eight-year-old with the heartbreaking innocence of a child who doesn't know how brave he is. Battling a rare form of cancer for the second time, "Kourageous Keith" doesn't love James for just his dunks or because he wins a lot. It's his resiliency.

"What I know about LeBron is that he is someone from Akron who never gives up," Keith said Friday, hours after returning home from his latest round of chemotherapy. "That is what I have to be. I can't give up, that's what kept me alive the first time I got cancer."

Keith, with a nervous hand and with some help from his mom Taylore Stolfo, has described his struggle in a letter to James. But Keith hasn't gotten up the nerve to try to deliver it to his idol yet, and might settle for leaving it with a security guard at the Cavaliers' training complex.

"We need to hurry," Stolfo said. "The season starts soon."

And indeed the night when the King returns and the chalk flies at courtside is nearly upon us. The Vegas oddmakers see the Cavs as Eastern Conference favorites, and Cleveland is daring to dream that the city's sports fortunes have turned.

In Akron, his return is the real victory, and if he secures a ring, even better.

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