Why LeBron James (Still) Trusts His Teammates

On the first basketball team of his life, every player went home with an MVP trophy. It’s a lesson that LeBron James has never forgotten.

But what happened that night is something that James has never forgotten: Every player on the team went home with his (or her) own MVP trophy.

It didn’t matter that James was the best player on the Summit Lake Hornets by the end of the season. His coaches would’ve stuffed pizza in his face if he’d complained that sharing the honor was unfair.

.. The decision to reward the entire team with MVP trophies had a profound effect on James early in his development as the greatest basketball player on earth. He couldn’t have known at the time how unusual it was. James didn’t have any experience to suggest otherwise. That’s simply the way he believed that basketball was supposed to be played.

“Right then I knew that this is a team game,” James said last month. “It’s not about one individual and how much one individual can do in order to win championships. In order to win, you have to have a full team.”

.. What he’s doing right now may be the most extraordinary run in the history of the NBA playoffs, but not even LeBron James can win a championship by himself.

.. But what most impressed John Reed, the head coach of the Summit Lake Hornets, was his precocious star player’s intuitive passing ability.

.. “At 9 years old,” Reed said, “he knew how to pass to 7-year-olds without knocking them down.”

One of those boys, Sonny Spoon, was too young for the league and sat on the Hornets’ bench only because his dad was a team manager. He was such a pipsqueak that it was actually a problem for his teammates.

“Nobody could pass him the ball without him falling over,” McGee said.

.. LeBron James could. In one of the last games of his first season, James took it upon himself to make sure the smallest guy on the team scored.

.. The only way to get his teammate a bucket was to get creative. “He rolled him the ball on the ground,”