"He's going to have a lot to prove"

[Tammo29@xxxxxxx]

LeBron's mature, but the hype
really isn't 
Mitch Lawrence
 NY Daily News  

        
Antoine Walker tries not to bother LeBron James too much these days, if he 
can help it.Yes, that LeBron James.

"But I E-mailed him the other night after his game on national TV," Walker 
said last night after the Celtics waxed the Knicks, 113-90, at the Garden. "I 
told him he played smart, under control, and it was a good win for him. You 
know, it's a tough situation for him to be in."

If not impossible. Now nobody is telling James he has to make the jump from 
high school to the NBA this June. Nobody is forcing him to skip college. But 
already, a few of the so-called experts who are doing him a disservice by 
saying he's already better than all but a handful of NBA players.

Perhaps no one in the NBA knows James better than Walker, not even Cavs coach 
John Lucas, who allowed the Akron prodigy to go through illegal off-season 
workouts with the Cavs.

Walker has been exchanging E-mails with James for the last two years. Last 
summer, he played with him for several weeks in Chicago, along with Michael 
Jordan.

"He was coming off wrist surgery, so he couldn't be aggressive," Walker said. 
"When he gets to this level, that's going to have to change."

Walker always talks tons of trash on the court. He did last night while he 
dissected the overmatched Clarence Weatherspoon. But he is one of the few 
people who is talking sense when it comes to LeBron James.

There definitely is a need for some sobering analysis when the kid is already 
being compared to a cross between Michael Jordan and Magic Johnson.

"I don't know how good he'll be in this league," Walker said. "You have to 
remember, he's going to come into this league where he'll be playing the 
'three.' He's 6-8, 240 pounds, so I'd expect that means he'll be going up 
against guys like Tracy McGrady and Paul Pierce and other great players at 
that position. That's elite company."

Wherever James turns, in fact, he'll be playing against players who are 
talented, skilled and tall.

"Obviously, he's going to have a lot to prove," Walker said. "And people have 
got to understand that he's going to probably go to a team that didn't do 
very well. And he might have to do some losing. There's going to be some 
learning involved."

Walker knows all about that, having been on losing teams his first five 
seasons in Boston. The difference is, nobody talked about Walker like they're 
talking about James.

"It's got to be tough for him because he's got to prove every night he can do 
something special," Walker said. "He just can't be a high school kid and have 
fun."

The Dick Vitales of the world are arguing that James should go to college and 
have fun, that he would be better off if the NBA had a rule prohibiting a
nyone under the age of 20 from entering the league. Just as he did while 
providing analysis on ESPN as James carved up Oak Hill Academy.

"He went on to say that the only people holding up the deal was the union and 
me," said Billy Hunter, the NBA Players Association executive director who 
was at the Garden last night. "He said that I refuse to sit down and do a 
deal. I was appalled when I heard that."

Hunter has a right to be. There is no deal. What's more, there is no reason 
for such a deal or a rule. Plenty of other teenagers sign pro contracts. You 
don't hear people screaming when it comes to tennis prodigies or baseball 
prospects or hockey players going for the money. But for some reason, the NBA 
has this problem, as if James is going to be impressed into some sort of 
cruel factory work out of a Charles Dickens story.

Kevin Garnett, Kobe Bryant and McGrady somehow made the jump from high school 
and became superstars without having set foot on a college campus. Not only 
are they among the top players in the game - better than James, by far - they 
have been nothing but a credit to the league. And, they never spent a day in 
a college basketball factory.

James won't be going to one of those, either.

"I told him, 'Just enjoy your senior season, and do what all seniors do. Go 
to your prom. Have fun,'" Walker said. "And then when it's all over, he's got 
to deal with the big boys."

Because that's all LeBron James will find in the NBA. 

Originally published on December 15, 2002