The few dozen steps from the court to the Madison Square Garden employee elevator could not be traveled without a handful of jerseys held out, accompanying voices pleading for attention. Even in the sanctuary of a mostly vacant NBA arena, after the late morning shoot-around, celebrity found LeBron James.
"It started crazy but it's actually gotten worse," Cleveland Cavaliers coach Paul Silas said. He snickered, shook his head and added, "I have so many people I know saying, `Can you get LeBron to sign this?'"
Silas, an NBA lifer who thought he had seen everything, said that it had been an exhaustive, regular-season haul, and James would later agree.
"A lot thrown on me this year," James said, sounding bored with the repetition of nightly inquisitions and 3 a.m. check-ins.
Three weeks ago, the Cavaliers were rolling toward the playoffs, but the wheels came off and LeBron's rookie revue made its scheduled closing Wednesday night, on Broadway, defeating the Knicks, 100-90. The Knicks move on now, with 15 other playoff entrants, to their preferred first-round series against the Nets. James goes home to northern Ohio to work on his jump shot.
The pro basketball season has many weeks remaining and in a definitive sense is only getting started. But if it feels as if the main event for 2003-2004 has already happened, that's because this season will ultimately be remembered as James' coming out party.
Even if the argument can be made that he wasn't the league's most successful rookie.
Carmelo Anthony lighted up at least as many nights in the formidable Western Conference, and his team, the Denver Nuggets, made the playoffs. My guess is the voters won't hold James accountable for the Cavaliers' late-season slide, which coincided with an injury to their point guard, Jeff McInnis. Cleveland still stretched its victory total to 35 from 17 and James easily met the soaring expectations for a teenager who last spring had more self-appointed advisers than throwback jerseys.
So many weighed in with the opinion that James should resist turning pro so he might model a college uniform for the financial benefit of a university's athletic department -- as opposed to profiting from this season's most popular NBA jersey, based on sales made by the league's Fifth Avenue retail outlet and Web site.
"I never even thought of playing for any of those college teams," James said when asked if he had felt regret last month.
Only during March would anyone question his wisdom. You couldn't miss the self-congratulatory announcers and pundits marking another round of tournament madness by reminding the gifted and talented everywhere not to waste their precious youth in the pursuit of a few million bucks.
Everyone loves the college game, including those determined to avoid it. It is college that so many of the players aren't so enamored of. Billy Packer and Dick Vitale love celebrating the clamor, but what they never talk about is how the band doesn't play and the fans don't cheer on those dreaded Monday morning strolls to class.
If James does edge Anthony in the balloting, it will make two straight years -- last season's winner was Amare Stoudemire -- that the rookie of the year has gone from high school to elevated NBA proficiency. No wonder there is speculation that more young men than ever will be taken in the first round of the coming NBA draft, and Commissioner David Stern is finally talking about establishing a true minor league.
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