Episode 7: The GOAT

LeBron James was born actually in 1984, the year that Michael Jordan was drafted.

So he was born December the 30th, 1984, in Akron, Ohio, randomly in the same hospital as Steph Curry, which is pretty weird.

Two top 10 players in the same hospital.

He was raised entirely in Akron, Ohio, which is weird because you think of all these other players that I've mentioned.

A lot of them bounce around, but not LeBron James.

He was raised primarily by his mum, Gloria, who was a really young parent at 16 years old.

She recognized that LeBron needed a stable environment to thrive as an adult.

So agreed to let a nine-year-old LeBron James move in with a different family, the family of Frank Walker, a local youth football coach.

Everyone called him Big Frank.

So Big Frank introduced LeBron James to organized sports, starting with football and then soon after basketball.

This gave him some structure in his life and his attendance at school was pretty average and went right back up to 100%.

And he started to develop as a young athlete very, very early on.

So at age nine was when LeBron James started playing basketball.

And just in the fifth grade, he joined the Northeast Ohio Shooting Stars as an AAU youth team coach.

That was coached by Drew Joyce.

This team is where he was introduced to his very close friends growing up.

Drew Joyce III, Cyan Cotton, and Willie McGee.

In the 6th and 7th grade, LeBron was more of a football star than a basketball guy.

Played a lot of football.

You know LeBron James now, he's a tank.

Would have been probably pretty big for his age back then.

He was still amazing at basketball, though.

He did tournaments outside of Ohio, you know, as well as doing it inside.

And in the eighth grade, he threw down his first dunk, which is wild.

And by the end of the eighth grade, he was 6'2".