On Jan. 2, 2010, a short while before noon, on a frigid Saturday morning in North Jersey, LeBron James descended from a Cleveland Cavaliers team bus for Game 1 of 900 and counting.
The King was already The King. The reason 17,569 people would fill the since-shuttered Izod Center that afternoon. But there were no fat rings on his fingers. His Twitter account was less than a year old. His agent wasn’t Rich Paul. And the basketball he was about to play – in a win over the 3-30 New Jersey Nets, a win in which the Cavs didn’t top 25 points in a single quarter – would look unrecognizable alongside the basketball you watch today.