LEBRON JAMES
LEBRON
JAMES
IS ON
FIRE*
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$#!T
*
MARCH 2014
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THAT’S
COOL
BECAUSE
TOGETHER
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MARCH 2014
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Greetings!
Welcome to the
magical world of
King James.
It’s nice, right?
Always sunny.
Palm trees.
A pair of
championships,
working on a third.
The Decision?
That worked out
just fine.
L E BRON
1 4 8
G Q . C O M
M A R C H
2 0 1 4
The 6 Looks
That Made
Him King of
NBA Style
1.
The DressedDown-andHorsingAround Suit
And at the
center of it all,
always making
and remaking
his world exactly
as he likes it:
the most stylish
empire-builder
in sports.
“This thing is
about more than
just basketball,”
he says.
One thing we can
all learn from LeBron:
There’s swagger in
simplicity. A lot of
NBA ballers try too
hard, but LeBron
proves you can take
a casually styled
suit to Olympic heights
just by donning
glasses and pushing up
your sleeves.
+
suit $3,075
Giorgio Armani
t-shirt $25
A|X Armani Exchange
sneakers $150
Nike
glasses
Cutler and Gross
watch
Audemars Piguet
Sort of makes you
wonder: What
will the King
conquer next?
OPO L I S
Jeanne Marie Laskas
Terry Richardson
2.
The Multimillionaire’s
Warm-up Jacket
One trademark
LeBron move
we all should mimic:
Every look gets
one statement
piece. Doesn’t have
to be loud. Should
never be zany. In
fact, the cleaner and
classic-er the better,
like this undeniable
leather jacket.
+
jacket $3,300
Gucci at MrPor ter.com
t-shirt $115
Fear of God
sweatpants $176
John Elliott + Co
watch
Audemars Piguet
A
After morning practice,
after the media session,
LeBron James went to the
locker room and iced, then
got pulled for a random
piss test, so now he’s late,
which he does not like being.
Also, he’s tired. There’s a chef here at the warehouse, where
Tupac and Snoop and Jay Z keep the rhythm, and hot lights shine
over racks of clothes and shoes to put on, which he loves—he loves
this shit—fashion is his candy, just ask Randy, to whom he has
handed his phone to take photos. He wants pictures of himself
in the outfits, maybe to tweet, which he also loves. But he’s tired,
that’s the thing. Sluggish. And so right in the middle of a sentence about chicken and hot sauce, which the chef just handed
him, he switches gears, and his eyes pop wide, and his mouth goes
rubbery, and, enunciating perfectly, he booms: You might be deep
in this game, but you got the rules missin / Niggaz be actin like
they savage, they out to get the cabbage / I got nuthin but love, for
my niggaz livin lavish.
People seem used to it. None of his handlers give pause. But it
does seem a little…dissociative.
Motherfuck the rest, two of the best from the west side / And I
can make you famous / Niggaz been dyin for years, so how could
they blame us?
He loves to sing. He refuses to have anything to do with co≠ee.
Singing is his co≠ee. Rejuvenated, he dances in the outfits for the
camera, clowns like he always did back in high school, gets every
bored person here happy.
He would like to be an actor. A comedy actor. He’s shooting his first
movie, Ballers, with Kevin Hart. The other thing he would like is to
play in the NFL. “Some days I want to be a singer. But my voice? Then
the next day I want to be Picasso.” He would like to be a billionaire.
“If it happens. It’s my biggest milestone. Obviously. I want to maximize my business. And if I happen to get it, if I happen to be a billiondollar athlete, ho. Hip hip hooray! Oh, my God, I’m gonna be excited.”
I’m tight grill when my situation ain’t improvin / I’m tryin to
murder everything movin.
H
e’s ten years into this insane career. Probably ten more to
go with the NBA, he figures. So it’s about halftime. It’s something to think about. “My drive to be the greatest basketball player
ever is very high.” Everything right now is fantastic. A Miami mansion, a beautiful wife and two sons. Cars. More money than any
other American athlete besides Floyd Mayweather, God love him.
Sportswriters are having orgasms: The King is going for a three-peat
with the Miami Heat, he has won four of the past five NBA MVP
awards, his right arm is as fast as a helicopter blade, and he could
notch a triple-double every night if he wanted.
Controlled exceptionalism, the most gifted ever? The game
seems so easy he’s left challenging only his own e∞ciency. They
say he’s Michael Jordan for a new generation. Or maybe they’ll
say Michael Jordan was the LeBron James of his generation, same
di≠erence, history will not bother splitting hairs. “Dr. J couldn’t
do what he does. Magic couldn’t do what he does,” says Heat president Pat Riley.
Being excellent at absolutely everything like this, it carries
responsibility. O≠ the court, on the court, it weighs on him. All
those people wanting more points out of him. They pay to see a
superhero, and the superhero should shoot the ball, create lanes
into which he can explode into everlasting glory, like Baryshnikov
performing consecutive grands jetés, like Pavarotti achieving nine
e≠ortless high C’s in one aria. (Seventeen curtain calls for that one.)
People who pay to see history being made expect history to be made.
“Like, I could average thirty-five points a game if I really wanted
to,” he says. He is beautifully handsome, solid and smooth as a sycamore. “But then—it wouldn’t be me,” he says. “So I don’t know if I
could do it, because of my instincts. I see a teammate open—even if
I have a great shot—I see a teammate open for a better shot, I gotta
feed him. It’s like, my mind sometimes be like ‘Shoot it,’ but then—
my instincts, you know?”
He is thoughtful. He is a man who chews on ideas this way and
that, enjoys the texture. The battle between predisposition and will.
It’s something to think about. “This thing is about more than just
basketball,” he says. “I can play basketball with my eyes closed and
my hands tied behind my back. The way my mind, my mind starts
working, we could probably be here for like…it could be like midnight. Someone will have to turn my switch o≠.”
One of the things that bothers him is when people say, “You’ve
changed.” First of all, he hasn’t. He still has his instincts. He still has
Akron sitting in him like a bag of cement.
“W
inning is my drug,” he says. “Winning is my ice cream.
Like my kids. They want more. ‘More! More!’ They just
want more.”
Actually, no. Right now Bryce, who is 6, is staring down at a melting bowl of something beige in a shop minutes away from the family’s mansion in Miami’s Coconut Grove.
“Yo, what’s the matter?” says James, six feet eight, 250 pounds
collapsed into an itty-bitty ice-cream-parlor chair, motioning to his
son, who is not complaining, who is sitting alone, silent, and not
easy to notice amid the swirl: customers, cops, some of James’s handlers, ice cream scoopers, a floor mopper, and his wife, Savannah,
in yoga pants, a yellow tee, eating salad from a Tupperware container she brought, exercising mother power well-wrought. “I said
now!” she barks at 9-year-old Bronny, who actually, technically, prefers later. The family is background. James is foreground. Everyone
gets it. Daddy is working, tossing out quotes to one enraptured
person or another, about this game and that game, to dunk or to
pass, to stay in this city or go to that one (no, he has no answer
about Miami), to sell a sneaker, a TV, a hamburger. Savannah is not
the type to do some wife dance for the enraptured people. She will
avoid making eye contact if she can get away with it. She’s the serious one. He’s the funny one, the charismatic, cool one. They got
married last summer, having been together since high school in
Akron, since way before he became King James.
“You don’t like your ice cream?” James calls to his son.
Bryce looks down at the melt, up at his dad. Demoralizing. Hard
to admit. A dud of a flavor choice. “I don’t like it,” he says.
»
M A R C H
2 0 1 4
G Q . C O M
1 5 1
3.
The Show-Methe-Hardware
Mogul Suit
If you’re not in touch
with your inner
CEO—your mogul
persona, with the suit
to match—get to
work. Jay Z has one.
So does LeBron.
That’s when you want
strong peak lapels
and a bold business
shirt like gingham.
+
suit $4,280
and shirt $590
Tom Ford
tie $180
Charvet
tie bar
The Tie Bar
pocket square
Sid Mashburn
1 5 2
G Q . C O M
M A R C H
2 0 1 4
4.
A New Spin on
the Ol’ Sweaterand-Jeans Trick
Sure, you can end
up looking like an
Everyman in a sweater
and jeans. Or like a
king. Choice is yours.
The difference is
in the details. The
sweater? Chestbroadening stripes.
The jeans? White
(because everyone
else has on blue).
+
sweater $495
and jeans $395
Ralph Lauren
Black Label Denim
bracelet
Car tier
watch
Audemars Piguet
5.
A Prep Look
the Other Guys
Can’t Pull Off
LeBron knows how
to find his own
lane, and that goes for
colors as much as
drives to the rack.While
D-Wade likes primary
colors and Westbrook
electric ones, LeBron
has his own signature
washed-out palette—
kinda like the hotels
on South Beach.
+
shirt $345
Michael Bastian
tie $170
Thom Browne New York
pants $198
Unis
shoes $275
Allen Edmonds
hat
Borsalino at JJ Hat Center
tie bar
The Tie Bar
gray bracelet
Hermès
watch
Audemars Piguet
“Go get something else!” James says.
“Try something else. You ain’t got no
complaints!”
Fatherhood, he says, is a lot like sports.
“Being a leader of my household, a leader
of Miami, a leader of Team USA. It’s the
same exact thing. You can sense when a guy
is frustrated—maybe doesn’t feel involved
enough in the o≠ense. As leader you go
over to him, you know, ‘How can I help?’
Because at the end of the day, we all have
one common goal—and that’s to be great.”
Winning, being great, it’s the whole
point of life. Is it not? Is there any reason
to tiptoe around that fact? Winning, James
says, is what a team does, not a person.
That notion sits at his core and explains
everything. The tattoo across his back,
huge, shoulder to shoulder, says chosen 1 .
It’s not simply precocious. It’s bigger than
that. It’s what happened back in Akron,
an American allegory. A dirt-poor fatherless nobody alone in his bed at night, hoping for his mom to come home, which she
didn’t—for a couple of years.
All that, and now all this.
Basketball took hold. In his senior year
of high school, averages of 31.6 points, 9.6
rebounds, 4.6 assists, and 3.4 steals per
game. Averages. But the thing that really
happened back then was a team. A family. You finally get one, you cling. All those
guys. Sian, Willie, Dru on the Fighting
Irish, of course, but also Maverick and
Rich and Randy, all those guys who would
come over his place in the projects, where his mom finally landed,
$22 a month for a tiny apartment, and everyone wanted to hang
there. Like a family reunion every single day, playing video games,
goofing around. He says they came there because they loved his
mom. They say it was because of him. “His charisma,” says Randy
Mims, who back then filled the role of big brother and is now his
day-to-day manager. “Everyone wanted to be around him. He was
born with it. He still has it. It’s what fills arenas.”
Next thing he’s 17 years old, he’s on the cover of Sports Illustrated.
A Nike contract. First overall pick in the 2003 NBA draft by the
Cleveland Cavaliers.
“I go from $10 in my pocket to $100 million. In high school. Yup.”
S
o, second of all, regarding change, of course he’s changed.
“Good! That’s like a good thing,” he says. “I’m like, ‘Thank you.’
Shit. I’m 29 years old with a family—I’m married with a family. I—
of course I’ve changed. The problem is, you haven’t changed. And
that’s why you dislike what I do, you know.”
He leans forward. He’s not going to be interrupted on this point.
“As an African-American, we hear it a lot where we grow up. You’ve
changed.” He’s sick of hearing it used as a criticism. “Because you’ve
tried to better yourself and because you’ve made it out. ‘You’re not
the same person that we used to know.’ Of course I’m not. I’m trying to better myself. Change is not a bad thing. Thinking that it’s
bad, you know, that’s one thing I think is a downfall for AfricanAmericans for sure.”
When he was still with the Cavs, he got a tattoo on his right forearm: 330. The Akron area code.
One person he thanks for all his success
is his father. Well, it’s not actually a thanks.
More of a conversation. “Like, ‘Wow, Dad,
you know what, I don’t know you, I have no
idea who you are, but because of you is part
of the reason who I am today.’ The fuel that
I use—you not being there—it’s part of the
reason I grew up to become who I am. It’s
part of the reason why I want to be handson with my endeavors. And be able to put
my guys that’s with me now in position. Like
Maverick Carter, my right-hand guy in my
business. Rich Paul, my agent. Randy Mims,
my friend—he’s my manager, you know. So
me in a position allowing people around me
to grow, that maybe wouldn’t have happened
if I had two parents, two sisters, a dog, and a
picket fence, you know?”
Change, of course, is exactly what turned
James into basketball’s most hated villain
for a stretch. That story occupies an indelible chapter in pop-culture history. He left
Cleveland in 2010 to go play for Miami. The
Decision. Over 13 million people watching
the big obnoxious reality show, which was,
he’ll remind you, to benefit the Boys & Girls
Clubs of America. But still. Tone-deaf. The
guys from Akron had a lot to learn about
how to run a multimillion-dollar athlete’s
career. “Crazy,” says Mims. “I don’t think
any of us had any (continued on page 205)
M A R C H
6.
The No-Days-Off
Approach to
Loungewear
A trip to the
grocery—or a flight
on the team jet—
doesn’t call for a suit.
But true style heroes
never phone in a
look. Even LeBron’s
sweats have a
meticulously modern
fit. That way, even
when he’s chilling,
LeBron still posterizes
the competition.
2 0 1 4
+
t-shirt $294
and pants $708
Rick Owens
sneakers
Balenciaga
where to buy it?
go to gq.com/go
/fashiondirectories
G Q . C O M
1 5 5