LeBron's Dream Team: How Four Friends and I Brought a Championship Home

LeBron James · Buzz Bissinger

Apr 2010 · Penguin

About this ebook

The inspiration for the Peacock Original Movie "Shooting Stars"

"A book that will incredibly move and inspire you.” —Jay-Z

"An entertaining, well-written reminder that even if he seems to have been around forever, James didn’t go directly from the nursery to the NBA.” —Sports Illustrated

The "dream team" was a bunch of kids from Akron, Ohio - LeBron James and his best friends - who first met on a youth basketball team of the same name when they were ten and eleven years old. United by their love of the game and their yearning for companionship, they quickly forged a bond which would carry them through thick and thin (a lot of thin) and, at last, to the brink of a national championship.

They were a motley group who faced challenges all too typical of inner-city America. LeBron grew up without a father and had moved with his mother more than a dozen times by the age of 10. Willie McGee, the quiet one, had left both his parents behind in Chicago to be raised by his older brother in Akron. Dru Joyce was outspoken, and his dad, who was ever-present, would end up coaching all five of the boys in high school. Sian Cotton, who also played football, was the happy-go-lucky enforcer, while Romeo Travis was unhappy, bitter, even surly, until he finally opened himself up to the bond his team mates offered.

In the summer after seventh grade, the "dream team" tasted glory when they qualified for a national championship tournament in Memphis. But they lost their focus, and had to go home early. They promised each other they would stay together and do whatever it took to win a national title.

They had no idea how hard it would be to pursue that promise. In the years that followed, they would endure jealousy, hostility, exploitation, resentment from the black community (because they went to a "white" high school), and the consequence of their own over-confidence. Not least, they would all have to wrestle with LeBron's outsize success, which brought too much attention and even a whiff of scandal their way. But together these five boys became men as they sought a national championship.

Ratings and reviews

I havent finished reading this book but its because i dont want to finish it. I honestly love this book so much that i hope it takes me another year to finish reading it. When you read the prologue of this book you expect it to be just another great athletes autobiography and his rise to the top. This is not what shooting stars is about. Shooting stars does talk about about how Lebron James grew up in the tough neigborhoods of Akron,Ohio a small town 30 minutes away from cleveland not even on the maps of the U.S. But it doesnt just describe the tough life of lebron james but it also describes the tough life that his friends lived and how roughing out of those tough times brought them together not just as a team on the court but as close friend off of it. This is a story of how 4 great friends came to be and how each one of their lives came together and how they stuck together during the good and the bad.

i love this book by the GOAT

Jessica muro mary

About the author

LeBron James plays for the NBA’s Cleveland Cavaliers. At seventeen he was featured on the cover of Sports Illustrated; at nineteen he became the youngest Rookie of the Year in NBA history; at twenty-three he is the third-highest-paid athlete in the world (including endorsements). He has hosted Saturday Night Live, graced Oprah’s stage, and appeared on the cover of Fortune.

Buzz Bissinger is the author of A Prayer for the City, the New York Times bestseller Three Nights in August, and Friday Night Lights, which has sold almost 2 million copies to date and spawned a film and a TV series. He is a contributing writer for Vanity Fair.