Live on ESPN2: X-Ploit Games

The Fighting Irish are on the fast break, the head-banded forward wearing No. 23 hits a teammate with a no-look behind-the-back pass and Dick Vitale is off and shrieking again:

“ARE YOU SERIOUS?!?

“ARE YOU SERIOUS?!?

“ARE YOU SER-I-OUS?!?

“How many college guys or NBA guys can make that pass in transition?!?”

Many of them, actually.

Many more can do more than what the player on the receiving end of the pass did, which was miss the layup before he was fouled.

“In the NBA, that’s a jam for a dunk!” Vitale screams. “I got goose bumps watching that! That made me think of the Magic man! Are you kidding me?!?”

Dickie V is screaming about a 17-year-old basketball player named LeBron James.

LeBron James is a senior at St. Vincent-St. Mary High School in Akron, Ohio, and his team, the proud Fighting Irish, is playing a pre-league tournament game against Oak Hill Academy.

Bill Walton is sitting next to Vitale. Jay Bilas and Andy Katz are courtside.

ESPN2 is televising this game, live on Thursday night, to a national audience, prime time on the East Coast, giving a bunch of 16- and 17-year kids with knocking knees the Big Monday treatment.

Are you serious?

Are you serious?

Are you ser-i-ous?

It is early in the second quarter of the third game of James’ high school senior season and ESPN is there, at Cleveland State’s Convocation Center, to plug its magazine cover story about James (on the stands now!) and the eight columns about James presently appearing on ESPN’s Web site (some great reading there, Walton assures us!) and, already, ESPN’s panting crew of announcers has compared the kid to Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan, Oscar Robertson, Kobe Bryant, Tiger Woods, Alex Rodriguez and both Williams sisters.

“Simply put, LeBron James is the best high school basketball player I have ever seen,” Bilas told us just before tipoff. “I think as a 17-year old, he’s better than Kobe Bryant was at the same age.

“Why? Because he is just as skilled as Kobe Bryant, but he’s more physically imposing.... He will be, without a doubt, the first pick in the [NBA] draft.”

Unless he tears an ACL dancing at the prom. Or slips a disk from carrying the burden of so many expectations, a burden ESPN has noticed, but isn’t about to lessen through any restraint of its own.

“There’s got to be some jitters out there, Bill,” Vitale mentions to Walton as the kid misses a couple of early shots. “There’s got to be jitters in that young guy. The scrutiny, the evaluation, the TV cameras, the NBA scouts, the big redhead, Mr. Walton in the house. I mean, he’s got to be nervous.”

Walton: “But that’s what you have to learn to deal with ... to enjoy this moment, to learn to anticipate this stage, the spotlight being on you.”

See, ESPN is performing a valuable service for young LeBron. By prematurely shoving him out into the prime-time circus, they’re toughening up the kid, exposing him early to the dangers of overexposure, so he’ll know how to cope down the line, after he turns 18.

He’ll thank them for it later.

“He’s got to be so concerned about the leeches and all the people around him and how to separate and get those out of his life and deal with those that genuinely love and care about him,” Vitale is saying.

“Because unfortunately, Bill, he’s going to have so many around him. You know and I know. We hear about exploitation, and that worries me, because there’s a lot of that going on here. People already now thinking about how they can make money, in an unsavory manner, off this teenager.”

You mean like ESPN2 televising his game against Oak Hill Academy as a lead-in to its special program about the next wave of potential superstar athletes, featuring LeBron James?

“People talk about hype,” Vitale adds, “but you can’t hide talent.”

Not as long as ESPN has air time to fill and commercial slots and magazines to sell.

With James, the hype has generated its own hype. During the days leading into Thursday’s telecast, CBS’ Billy Packer criticized ESPN for airing the game and said Vitale and Walton should have turned down the assignment.

Walton said he had requested the assignment because he was curious to see for himself what the hype was all about.

Vitale said he had accepted the assignment because he’s not big enough to turn down assignments.

Then basketball-shoe rep Sonny Vaccaro criticized Packer for criticizing Vitale and Walton.

The ball was rolling, wild and out of control, long before James scored the first of his 31 points in St. Vincent-St. Mary’s 65-45 victory over Oak Hill. Already, James’ high school has agreed to make 10 of his games this season available throughout Ohio on pay-per-view, $7.95 a game. A local ticket broker was selling courtside seats to Thursday’s game for $100 apiece.

“It’s not LeBron James’ fault that this is all happening,” Walton acknowledged. “He’s just living in the world that we’ve all created.”

Vitale: “All of us. We’re all part of it.”

Walton: “So many things going on around him, swirling around him. One of the things we tried to impress upon these young people is that they are high school students and that they should enjoy this time. They will never get this time back in their lives.”

And ESPN’s cameras were on hand to help steal away one more night of it.