An unhappy childhood – without a father, living with a single mother – nurtured LeBron James’ iron will in his journey to become the number one star in the NBA.

LeBron James’ misfortune is not uncommon in life as well as in the sports world. But it was enough to break the will of any black child born in America in the 80s. Fatherless, homeless, James wandered the streets of Akron, Ohio with his 16-year-old single mother. and live entirely on social assistance. That was the beginning of the difficult childhood years of the current number one star in the NBA.

High school girl Gloria Marie James became pregnant after having sex with mobster Anthony McClelland. There was no love between them, as Gloria later recounted, but simply the satisfaction of physiological needs. Carrying a drop of McClelland’s blood is therefore beyond Gloria’s will. Little LeBron was born on the last day of 1984, one of the coldest winter days of Gloria’s life. At that time, she was only 16 years old.

The first three years things weren’t so bad. Gloria still goes to school every day, leaving LeBron at home with his grandmother and mother. Her two brothers lived together in a large house on Hickory Street, next to a unkempt road lined with old oak trees and a railroad crossing, next to downtown Akron. The tragedy began on Christmas Day 1987, when Gloria’s mother, Freda, died after a heart attack. A few months ago, the young girl’s grandmother left this world. The stability of the whole family is seriously threatened.

Terry and Curt, Gloria’s two brothers, try to keep the house so their sister and nephew have a place to live. But the serious deterioration of the house, combined with insufficient income to cover additional expenses, caused the three brothers to soon become homeless. Each person has to find their own new place to live when no one has a stable job.

Gloria took three-year-old LeBron around the streets of Akron. They lived in friends’ houses. Each place stays for a few weeks or longer, a few months. Sometimes, when she was in a desperate situation, Gloria would bring LeBron to her brother Terry’s house to stay for a few days. Mother and daughter lived on social assistance during this time, when Gloria could not get a suitable job because she could not send her child to daycare.This time was later described bitterly by James: “My asset is a backpack on my back. I often say to the backpack ‘It’s time to leave’ every time I have to leave a house with my mother.” some household”. Until 1993, when LeBron was nine years old, mother and son moved on average twice a month. They often appear in humanitarian shelters for the homeless, or overnight sleeping places built by churches.

 

During his fourth grade year, LeBron moved 12 times and missed about 100 days of school. “The boy had trouble moving house. He was confused because he had new classmates at new schools. One time he skipped school because he didn’t know which bus to take to school,” Bruce Kelker – the first football coach by LeBron James – recounted.

Keller, after a chance meeting on the street and noticing LeBron’s outstanding physique, took both mother and son to live with him and his girlfriend in a small apartment. Keller is responsible for picking up and dropping James off, buying practice gear, and teaching rugby, in return for Gloria making hamburgers and cooking twice a week.

James is currently the star with the most potential to become America’s next billionaire from the NBA, after the legendary Michael Jordan. After signing a lifetime contract worth $500 million with Nike last year, James bought his mother a six million dollar mansion in Florida. Previously, the 32-year-old star bought 10,000 square meters of land in Akron, a place associated with the mother and daughter’s difficult childhood, to build one of the largest amusement parks in the state of Ohio.