A modest season for young LeBron James would have been considered career-defining for many high school basketball players.
After all, when James was a 15-year-old freshman, his varsity team went 27-0. He averaged more than 18 points and six rebounds per game on the way to an Ohio state championship in 2000.
The next three years were an affirmation of his greatness, as he generated gawdy high school basketball career statistics, along with controversies and intense media pressure, cementing James as one whose bright future would be housed inside a fishbowl. And in a stroke of luck beyond measure, the 2003 NBA draft saw the perpetual doormat Cleveland Cavaliers landing the local kid from Akron with the first pick, instantly changing the trajectory of not only the team but the town itself.
In Rajiv Joseph’s play “King James,” now being presented by TheatreWorks Silicon Valley at the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts, two buddies, Matt and Shawn, engage in the ups and downs of their friendship, paralleling the ups and downs of James’ career. James went from savior to villain and back again, and finally achieved Cleveland’s elusive goal of winning a world championship on Father’s Day in 2016.
Jeffrey Lo is associate producer of casting and literary management at TheatreWorks. But for this show, he was given a bittersweet title — “Basketball Dramaturg/Sneaker Consultant.” The bitter part is that Lo is a diehard Golden State Warriors fan, sadly remembering the feeling of driving home after the final game of the 2016 championships, which saw the Warriors blow a 3-1 series lead and losing to the James-led Cavaliers. A an East Bay traffic jam meant joining his comrades in Dub Nation on the 880 freeway passing Oracle Arena in Oakland as the game was letting out.
“You saw people on the road just shellshocked,” said Lo, who sat in dead silence all the way home and admits that even now, pieces of Joseph’s play, which he loves, brings back bad memories. “Myself and (sound designer) Gregory Robinson just let out big sighs when we hear some parts of this play.”
On the other side of the coin was an Joseph, who joyfully witnessed James’ greatness as an 18-year-old rookie. Years later, he felt the sadness and anger in 2010 when one of James’ infamous “Decision,” had the superstar saying these words to announce he would be leaving Cleveland to join fellow superstars Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh in Miami: “I’m going to take my talents to South Beach.”
It wasn’t just the leaving that was the punch in the gut, but all that James brought to Ohio, and not just on the court.
“LeBron made a huge economic impact in Cleveland,” Joseph recalled. “In larger markets like Chicago or Los Angeles, one sports figure can’t move the needle as much. But in a small market like Cleveland, LeBron’s impact was extraordinary.”
Director Giovanna Sardelli, also the artistic director of TheatreWorks, has developed a deep bond with Joseph, now entering her 17th production collaborating with the Pulitzer-finalist playwright. Knowing Joseph as she does means knowing his passion for Cleveland sports, a collection of teams that have had an iconic relationship with futility. It also means knowing how to create a world where his dynamic characters can be unleashed to deliver humor, honesty, and truth.
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“I know his rhythms and how he crafts stories, so I’m always looking for where the moments of tension are, where the release into humor is,” Sardelli said. “I also know what it takes to be a Rajiv Joseph actor — how deceptively hard his plays are and the craft and talent and skill they require. So all of those things help me tell this story.”
Sardelli admits she’s not the biggest sports fan, especially if she’s not in-person at a game. Yet as an undergraduate student at the University of Nevada Las Vegas, she recalls the energy and controversy of Jerry Tarkanian’s Runnin’ Rebels basketball teams. Those teams brought a passion that helped Sardelli fully understand the alchemy between a town and a team.
Despite the subject matter of the play, and how four specific periods of time in the life of James informs the friendship arcs of Matt and Shawn, the entryway for an audience into the story does not have to be the actual sport.
“This play is about two human beings who are just utterly delightful, charming, and kind of ridiculous,” Sardelli said. “They are wonderfully, fully-realized human beings onstage telling you a story, and you connect to their story and their friendship.”
David John Chávez is chair of the American Theatre Critics Association and a two-time juror for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama (‘22-‘23); @davidjchavez.
‘KING JAMES’
By Rajiv Joseph, presented by TheatreWorks Silicon Valley
Through: Nov. 3
Where: Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts, 500 Castro St., Mountain View
Tickets: $34-$115; www.theatreworks.org