The college players attending the LeBron James Skills Academy had to wait and wait for their first opportunity to test themselves against James’ skills. James didn't join in on the pickup games with the college players—everyone from Ohio State’s Jared Sullinger to Kansas’ Thomas Robinson to Duke’s Plumlee brothers, Miles and Mason—until Thursday evening. But his influence on the camp for top high school and college players has been apparent since the first day.
Connecticut center Alex Oriakhi, a starter on the 2011 NCAA championship team, attended the first LeBron James Skills Academy in 2007 as a high school junior. He said he appreciated the talk James presented this week at the banquet that opened the camp.
“He said you definitely have to have a passion for the game, work at your game hard,” Oriakhi said Thursday afternoon. “One thing that I learned from him: He always keeps his head up, no matter what he goes through. He always stays positive. That’s something you can take from one of the greatest athletes in the world.”
The Skills Academy was Nike’s reaction to criticism that its old All-American Camp was too much a series of pickup games and did not include enough instruction. The last Nike All-American Camp was in 2006, and it was replaced by a series of instructional camps for each position—point guards, wings, big men—with the best players at those camps eventually winding up in on the Akron campus.
“We’ve been talking,” said forward Anthony Davis, an incoming freshman at Kentucky. “He told us how the league is, what he experienced in high school. He didn’t get the chance to go to college, but he told us he heard about how college life was. He’s been giving us some good advice, some good pointers about the game.”
James frequently plays a bit with the high school players in attendance, as he did this week when he surprised camp officials by slipping on one of the camp jerseys and stepping into drills without notice. He also has played plenty of pickup games over the years with college players, as in 2008 when a team with James and star point guard Chris Paul struggled in a series of games against the likes of UConn’s Hasheem Thabeet.
A year later, James played against the collegians and was dunked over by Xavier’s Jordan Crawford, an incident that became a summer basketball sensation when a Nike official reportedly attempted to confiscate a videotape of the play. Crawford's dunk still wound up on YouTube and has been viewed more than one million times.There'll be no tapes of Thursday night's competition, as not long after James entered the gym Nike officials ushered all media members outside, to make sure no misplays by James are recorded for posterity's sake.
“LeBron’s been real nice,” Xavier All-American point guard Tu Holloway told Sporting News on Thursday. “The night of the banquet, we were able to ask him questions, and he hung out with us. He knew some of us by name, on a first-name basis.”
So he knew you? “No,” Holloway said. “I told him I went to Xavier, and he probably didn’t want to mess with me because of Jordan.”