A HOLLYWOOD ENDING

Backstage with a marquee basketball franchise and its ageless icon.

Experienced NBA reporter Weitzman pens a solid work of narrative journalism about the evolution of basketball’s biggest star and the battle for front-office control of the team he guided to a championship in 2020. Forty-year-old LeBron James is, by acclamation, the game’s most intelligent player, and Weitzman skillfully shows how the player’s hardwood acumen is complemented by a systematic approach to wielding his influence. The broad outlines of this story, concerning James’ professional partnership with agent Rich Paul, aren’t new. Weitzman, though, adds fresh details on relatively overlooked aspects of James’ career. James had once hoped, in his words, “to keep athletics and politics separate,” but in 2020, when police killings of unarmed Black people were followed by nationwide protests, he became an outspoken voice for social justice. Seeking “results, not just rhetoric,” Weitzman writes, James founded a voting rights nonprofit that recruited thousands of volunteer poll workers. Meanwhile, he and other players successfully pressured team owners to use NBA arenas as polling sites. As a teammate, however, James isn’t always so fair-minded. Weitzman notes instances in which James played halfhearted defense, scapegoated young teammates, and effusively praised another team’s coach when his own coach’s job was in jeopardy. Some of this will be familiar to close followers of James’ social media posts, but Weitzman does a fine job of documenting how James’ “passive-aggressive swipes” are themselves expressions of power. Weitzman opens the book with a solid account of the widely covered succession battle after the 2013 death of longtime Lakers owner Jerry Buss. More memorable are his anecdotes about lackadaisical players, team gambling sessions, and shouting matches between coaches and fading stars—fun tidbits that show how teams work, and don’t.

Perceptive reporting on a transcendent athlete’s methodical power moves.