Lebron James, Gloria's son, the boy from Akron

Fate seemed written for someone born in Akron in the mid-eighties.

Thirty miles from Cleveland, in northeast Ohio, the city was a nest of poverty and crime, the place where black parents taught their children to hide when they saw a police car.

If the boy was also the child of a 16-year-old mother, alone because the baby's father abandoned her when she became pregnant, the roulette wheel of the future pointed to a life of suffering.

At least that was the common path in that place and circumstances.

How an orange ball changed the life of the protagonist of this story is almost unreal.

But it is the story of LeBron Raymone James.

Glory's son.

The boy from Akron.

"Look, dad, that you have not been there is one of the reasons why I have grown up like this and I am what I am, which is why I get so stubborn when I want to achieve something," LeBron would write years later to explain how that poor boy he would become one of the greatest players of all time and the leading scorer in the NBA.

Dad was Anthony McClelland, another broken life from Akron, just another guest in jail.

He never met him.

Another partner of the mother, Eddie Jackson, also ended up behind bars for cocaine trafficking.

LeBron did not have a father.

Mom, Gloria, it was everything.

And he was everything to her.

The survivor who linked up to three jobs a day to bring a plate of food to the table, the one who went with her son from move to move, begging for a sofa to sleep on because they couldn't pay rent,

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“I spent many scary nights, hearing police sirens and gunshots.

I didn't know if one of those shots was for my mother.

As a child I saw everything.

Drugs, murder... things you don't want any child to experience.

It was crazy.

Every day I woke up knowing that I had to fight ”, revives LeBron.

The fight had a round shape for him.

The basketball gave his life meaning.

After trying out football, he found his place on the field.

His first basket was a plastic box on top of two tables.

The rest of the kids laughed at him because he didn't shoot.

But the little one was stubborn.

And he over time he forged a prodigious body.

Frank Walker wasn't just his first basketball coach.

He also gave him a roof, along with his children, so that James could live for a while while Gloria tried to stay afloat.

So she managed to pay a rent of 22 dollars a month for LeBron to come home.

By then basketball had already given him an order, a discipline, a goal.

He was good, very good.

He came to the institute, the first time he lived with white boys.

At 13 years old, his first mate.

Everything would be unstoppable.

From Ohio talent to national star, The Chosen One, according to

Michael Jordan's heir.

Everything changed and nothing changed, because deep down he has continued to be Akron's child, Gloria's son.

He married his boyhood sweetheart, Savannah, fathered him after his first NBA season, and childhood friends of his have managed his career.

They were all on the track this Tuesday in Los Angeles.

LeBron, in 2002 in a game with his high school team, St. Vincent-St.

Mary's.

TERRY GILLIAM (AP)

“I'm just a kid from Akron,” LeBron said when he broke Kareem's record.

That umbilical cord was never broken, not even when Ohio burned their jerseys when they decided to leave the Cavaliers for Miami.

LeBron reciprocated by creating a foundation to help the city's children, he built a school, has been a speaker against racism and has not hesitated to talk about politics, especially against Donald Trump.

"I want people to remember me as much for what I did on the pitch as for what I did off it," he sums up.

And above all, he has wanted to be for his three children, Bronny, Bryce and Zhuri, the father he never had.

“He always said: 'When I have a son, he's not only going to bear my name, but I'm going to do everything that man didn't do with me.'

He wanted my children not to experience what I experienced.

All I can do now is give you a model,

"As an athlete, LeBron has made the exceptional normal, like breaking Kareem's record," explains Davide Chinellato, author of

(Corner publishing house), the latest biography of El Rey;

“However, the most interesting thing is who he is off the pitch.

His is a wonderful story of redemption, of a boy from nowhere and from the American suburbs who becomes a sports icon far beyond what he has done with the ball.

As he says, his greatest achievements are not the titles, but the Akron school, his foundation.

He has created an empire and while still being in the elite.

Like Jordan and Muhammad Ali, he is an icon."

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