GQ Plays Pickup With LeBron James

I've been reading GQ since I was 16 years old, and I still remember the first issue I ever bought. It was April 1995, and the cover asked a question I hadn't yet realized needed to be answered: Can Grant Hill Save Sports?

In hindsight, Hill could barely manage to save his own ankles, and yet somehow, some way, sports has persevered. (14 years and counting!)

This month, LeBron James graces GQ's cover, but instead of burdening him with the fate of athletics as a whole, they asked a simpler question: could a team of writers and editors beat LeBron James in a game of five-on-one?

Writer Joel Lovell and five of his colleagues drove from NYC to Cleveland to find out, and while James understandably balked, he did humor the group with a spirited game of 3-on-3. Lovell wrote about the experience for the cover story, and after reading it, I caught up with Lovell last night for a few more questions -- including which NBA player he wants to take on next.

Matt Watson: Where does sharing the court with LeBron rank among the highlights of your athletic career?
Joel Lovell: It is up there, I got to say, man. It was really good. When we were going out there, we all started worrying, "Maybe we're getting too psyched about this, we're investing too much in it and it's going to be kind of a drag and he's not going to be into it." And we all started worrying like we were going to be really disappointed, and it definitely was not disappointing – he delivered. It was amazing to be on the court with him, just to see him up close was incredible.

Matt Watson: Did he do the whole chalk thing before the game?
Joel Lovell: He did not, although they were trying to come up with some chalk for us to use. They couldn't find any in the facility so we didn't do it. We were hoping when he stepped out on the court we would all do the chalk to try to psych him out. Sadly it didn't come to fruition.

Matt Watson: Did you guys leave the car running outside just in case LeBron rolled an ankle and you had to make a quick getaway?
Joel Lovell: Man, I've got to tell you, we showed up there, and they had said, "Come at the tail end of practice, those guys will be finishing up practice and then you guys can do your thing."

And so we walk in and we watched them finishing up their practice, they're doing various shooting drills, and then I saw Danny Ferry kind of walking around the practice facility and I thought, "Wow, the Cavs GM is not going to be expecting that we're playing LeBron James right now."

And it immediately occurred to me that there is no way that anybody ran this past him. This was something that was negotiated with LeBron's publicist and the publicist from the Cavs, but I don't think anyone actually said like, "Yeah, so these guys from GQ are going to come out and play him five on one, and they really want to play him."

So yeah, there were a couple of huddled meetings where suddenly you could tell Ferry was like, "Who are those jokers, first of all? And what is LeBron doing down there with them? Why is he on the court with them right now?" But yeah, it all worked out, the only injuries were on our side, not his.

Matt Watson: Speaking of injuries, how many times did he dunk? Did anyone actually try to step in front and take a charge?
Joel Lovell: We talked a lot about taking the charge in the days leading up to the game, but when we actually got on the court with him -- I know it's a cliché to say the guy is huge, but it really is incredible to see how powerful he is up close, he's so massive -- it became very clear that nobody would be taking any charges.

We said at one point, "Yeah, we had this whole game plan where we were going to force you left and take the charge." And he said, "Yeah, if you took the charge, you'd be in the Cleveland Clinic right now. You would not be here."

He threw down one absolutely monstrous dunk. Otherwise he was mostly shooting from behind the arc -- from way behind the arc.

Matt Watson: Did he break out his "crab dribble" move? I don't know if you caught the whole hullabaloo earlier this month with the Wizards ...
Joel Lovell: What did he do?

Matt Watson: He called it a "crab dribble," and basically it was, well, it was traveling, and he actually got whistled for it at the end of a game, and he was just dumbfounded that he got whistled. [...] He tried to justify it for a couple of days after, called it a "crab dribble" and said it was his trademark move and that he was going to keep on doing it.
Joel Lovell: That's very funny. No, he didn't pull it out. Had he pulled it out on us, we would have called him on it.

Understandably he was kind of floating around on the outskirts a little bit, trying not to get too tangled up with our awkward legs and arms inside, and he was just dropping 40 footers. But you could tell, this is a guy who understands how to deliver the goods, he's a real performer. There was a camera crew there, and so as the game went on, he started drifting inside more and more and more.

He did that absolutely incredible dunk, but he also blocked a shot – there was a guy from GQ who's like 6-7, so basically LeBron's height, and he put the shot near the backboard, sort of banking it from five feet or so, and LeBron went up and he pinned it so hard against the board and then slapped the backboard. After the game we were looking up at the board and there's this massive handprint that's easily two feet above the rim, and he did it from flat-footed from beneath the rim. It was incredible.

Matt Watson: So, I take it there was no confusion about whose handprint that was?
Joel Lovell: No, no, no. None of us could even touch the rim, I'm sure.

Matt Watson: You were on his team, right?
Joel Lovell: Yeah, I was actually on his team.

Matt Watson: How did that come down? Because you guys were originally thinking five-on-one.
Joel Lovell: We went out there thinking five-on-one, and my guess is that what had happened was that it had been sort of communicated to him in vague terms: these guys from GQ are coming, they want to play basketball with you. [...] And I think what he was imagining was that we'd shoot around, we'd play some HORSE, we'll do whatever, but nobody actually said, "Yeah, they want to play you five-on-one."

So we got there, we're shooting around. He has a couple of media things he has to deal with, local media stuff, and he comes over. And one of the guys who was with us, this guy Adam Rappaport who's an editor here, said, "So, have you been briefed on this? Are you clear on what's going on?"

And again, we had all seen Danny Ferry in the gym, so we just wanted to make sure this was kosher. And LeBron says, "No, no, what are we going to do?" And Adam says, "We drove out here from New York City, we took a road trip out here to play you five-on-one. We're ready, we're ready to go."

And he's like, "Yeah, I can't play you guys five-on-one." And he said, "I'll tell you what, let's play some shooting games ..." And Adam again, to his great credit, said, "Look, we didn't drive all the way out here to play shooting games, we came here to play a game with LeBron James of some kind." LeBron was very cool, he said, "Alright, it's three on three, you and you" -- me and Adam – "you guys are on my team." Shoot for game, he drains one, he's like, "Alright, it's our ball."

And then he was totally into it. It was very fun to play with him. He was trash talking a lot, it was very fun being on the court with him, he kind of got into it.

Matt Watson: In the article you called him the "best basketball player alive" – so I'm curious, what would the score have been if you played Kobe Bryant?
Joel Lovell: Five-on-one?

Matt Watson: Yeah.
Joel Lovell: I believe that LeBron and Kobe could both beat us handily, although I do still think that you can make the argument that LeBron just has more weapons than Kobe does. I realize that people are going to disagree with me.

But if Kobe wants to play, I'm ready, I'm ready to get on the court with him. If he wants to bring it, I'm there.

Matt Watson: I consider that a challenge. I noticed you slipped in a VitaminWater reference – did [LeBron] slip you a few bucks for that?
Joel Lovell: He did not! At that time I'd forgotten that he's one of their guys. Although I guess in the issue there's actually a VitaminWater ad right before the actual story.

But no, he walked into the interview after we played – we finished the game and he had to go off and shower and do some other media stuff, it's incredible just how much time this guy has to spend talking to people with a camera in his face – so he finished all that stuff and he came into the room where we were all going to talk to him and immediately somebody is like, "What can we get you LeBron?" And he's just like, "VitaminWater, VitaminWaters for everybody." And there were suddenly 30 VitaminWaters on the table.

Matt Watson: I know you mentioned in the article that you hope that he's going to do something more than just average 30 points a game – do you think he has that sense of trying to be just the best athlete pitchman like Jordan or Tiger? Or do you think he really has the goal of being something more transcendent like Muhammad Ali or someone like that?
Joel Lovell: I think it's definitely the latter. I mean, obviously the times are different and Ali was sort of more overtly political in a more political time. But I think – who knows for sure? – but the feeling you get off him is that he wants to be more Ali than Jordan, if that makes any sense. I think he doesn't want to be just an extraordinarily wealthy corporate pitchman.

He's very conscious of making money, he talked a lot about the various business decisions he's made in his life, about his relationship with the companies he represents, how he wants to be more than just a guy who gets a check from them, that he has these annual meetings where he has a lot of creative input in the advertising campaigns. He seems to be exceedingly smart as a businessman.

But the more interesting thing, to me anyway, he spent a lot of time talking about this election and his getting involved in the Obama campaign, and [how] he hosted this big "Get Out the Vote" fundraiser in Ohio, he and Jay-Z, and he was very candid.

He said, "You know, four years ago when there was a presidential campaign, I literally didn't know that Ohio was a swing state. I didn't even know it was an important state in American politics ... I wasn't paying attention to politics in that way. But I'm 24 years old, I'm an African-American man and there's an African-American man running for president and I paid attention to what he was saying and I just believe that this was the moment in my life where I can make a difference not just in terms of getting a paycheck from a company for letting them use my face but actually move some people."

And when he talked in those terms, a) it was very convincing, and b) you could just tell, this is a guy who wants to be something other than just an athlete who makes a ton of money. He has a sense of some greater promise in the world – I think, I mean, who knows? But that's certainly the vibe you get off of him.

Matt Watson: That's pretty much all I got, but I'm just curious, how do you top this? What's your next project?
Joel Lovell: I can't. [Laughing] This is a real dream come true. It's all downhill from here. I don't know. I'm certainly ready to play Kobe if he wants, and other than that, I don't know. This is the real pinnacle. We were driving back from Cleveland and we all agreed that if anyone of us ever complains about our job again than all the other guys get to punch him in the face. Not everybody gets the chance to play LeBron James and write about it.