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L O O K S H A R P + L I V E S M A R T

LEBRON JAMESIS ON FIRE*

WE’RE IN LOVE WITH KATE MARA

*AND THAT’S COOL BECAUSE

THENBA IS THE

RED-HOT CENTER

OF STYLE

A 24-PAGE CELEBRATION

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GQ

Greetings!

Welcome to the magical world of King James.

It’s nice, right?

Always sunny. Palm trees.

A pair of championships, working on a third.

The Decision? That worked out just fine.

1 4 8 G Q . C O M M A R C H 2 0 1 4

L E B R O N

And at the center of it all, always making and remaking his world exactly as he likes it: the most stylish empire-builder in sports.

“This thing is about more than just basketball,” he says.

Sort of makes you wonder: What will the King conquer next?

Jeanne Marie Laskas

Terry Richardson

The 6 Looks That Made

Him King of NBA Style

1.The Dressed-

Down-and-Horsing-

Around Suit

One thing we can all learn from LeBron:

There’s swagger in simplicity. A lot of

NBA ballers try too hard, but LeBron

proves you can take a casually styled

suit to Olympic heights just by donning

glasses and pushing up your sleeves.

+suit $3,075

Giorgio Armanit-shirt $25

A|X Armani Exchangesneakers $150

Nikeglasses

Cutler and Grosswatch

Audemars Piguet

P LO O I S

2.The Multi-millionaire’s Warm-up Jacket

One trademark LeBron move we all should mimic: Every look gets one statement piece. Doesn’t have to be loud. Should never be zany. In fact, the cleaner and classic-er the better, like this undeniable leather jacket.

+jacket $3,300 Gucci at MrPorter.comt-shirt $115 Fear of Godsweatpants $176 John Elliott + Cowatch Audemars Piguet

After morning practice, after the media session, LeBron James went to the locker room and iced, then got pulled for a random piss test, so now he’s late, which he does not like being.

Also, he’s tired. There’s a chef here at the warehouse, where Tupac and Snoop and Jay Z keep the rhythm, and hot lights shine over racks of clothes and shoes to put on, which he loves—he loves this shit—fashion is his candy, just ask Randy, to whom he has handed his phone to take photos. He wants pictures of himself in the outfits, maybe to tweet, which he also loves. But he’s tired, that’s the thing. Sluggish. And so right in the middle of a sen-tence about chicken and hot sauce, which the chef just handed him, he switches gears, and his eyes pop wide, and his mouth goes rubbery, and, enunciating perfectly, he booms: You might be deep in this game, but you got the rules missin / Niggaz be actin like they savage, they out to get the cabbage / I got nuthin but love, for my niggaz livin lavish.

People seem used to it. None of his handlers give pause. But it does seem a little…dissociative.

Motherfuck the rest, two of the best from the west side / And I can make you famous / Niggaz been dyin for years, so how could they blame us?

He loves to sing. He refuses to have anything to do with co≠ee. Singing is his co≠ee. Rejuvenated, he dances in the outfits for the camera, clowns like he always did back in high school, gets every bored person here happy.

He would like to be an actor. A comedy actor. He’s shooting his first movie, Ballers, with Kevin Hart. The other thing he would like is to play in the NFL. “Some days I want to be a singer. But my voice? Then the next day I want to be Picasso.” He would like to be a billionaire. “If it happens. It’s my biggest milestone. Obviously. I want to maxi-mize my business. And if I happen to get it, if I happen to be a billion-dollar athlete, ho. Hip hip hooray! Oh, my God, I’m gonna be excited.”

I’m tight grill when my situation ain’t improvin / I’m tryin to murder everything movin.

He’s ten years into this insane career. Probably ten more to go with the NBA, he figures. So it’s about halftime. It’s some-

thing to think about. “My drive to be the greatest basketball player ever is very high.” Everything right now is fantastic. A Miami man-sion, a beautiful wife and two sons. Cars. More money than any other American athlete besides Floyd Mayweather, God love him. Sportswriters are having orgasms: The King is going for a three-peat

with the Miami Heat, he has won four of the past five NBA MVP awards, his right arm is as fast as a helicopter blade, and he could notch a triple-double every night if he wanted.

Controlled exceptionalism, the most gifted ever? The game seems so easy he’s left challenging only his own e∞ciency. They say he’s Michael Jordan for a new generation. Or maybe they’ll say Michael Jordan was the LeBron James of his generation, same di≠erence, history will not bother splitting hairs. “Dr. J couldn’t do what he does. Magic couldn’t do what he does,” says Heat presi-dent Pat Riley.

Being excellent at absolutely everything like this, it carries responsibility. O≠ the court, on the court, it weighs on him. All those people wanting more points out of him. They pay to see a superhero, and the superhero should shoot the ball, create lanes into which he can explode into everlasting glory, like Baryshnikov performing consecutive grands jetés, like Pavarotti achieving nine e≠ortless high C’s in one aria. (Seventeen curtain calls for that one.) People who pay to see history being made expect history to be made.

“Like, I could average thirty-five points a game if I really wanted to,” he says. He is beautifully handsome, solid and smooth as a syca-more. “But then—it wouldn’t be me,” he says. “So I don’t know if I could do it, because of my instincts. I see a teammate open—even if I have a great shot—I see a teammate open for a better shot, I gotta feed him. It’s like, my mind sometimes be like ‘Shoot it,’ but then—my instincts, you know?”

He is thoughtful. He is a man who chews on ideas this way and that, enjoys the texture. The battle between predisposition and will. It’s something to think about. “This thing is about more than just basketball,” he says. “I can play basketball with my eyes closed and my hands tied behind my back. The way my mind, my mind starts working, we could probably be here for like…it could be like mid-night. Someone will have to turn my switch o≠.”

One of the things that bothers him is when people say, “You’ve changed.” First of all, he hasn’t. He still has his instincts. He still has Akron sitting in him like a bag of cement.

“Winning is my drug,” he says. “Winning is my ice cream. Like my kids. They want more. ‘More! More!’ They just

want more.”Actually, no. Right now Bryce, who is 6, is staring down at a melt-

ing bowl of something beige in a shop minutes away from the fam-ily’s mansion in Miami’s Coconut Grove.

“Yo, what’s the matter?” says James, six feet eight, 250 pounds collapsed into an itty-bitty ice-cream-parlor chair, motioning to his son, who is not complaining, who is sitting alone, silent, and not easy to notice amid the swirl: customers, cops, some of James’s han-dlers, ice cream scoopers, a floor mopper, and his wife, Savannah, in yoga pants, a yellow tee, eating salad from a Tupperware con-tainer she brought, exercising mother power well-wrought. “I said now!” she barks at 9-year-old Bronny, who actually, technically, pre-fers later. The family is background. James is foreground. Everyone gets it. Daddy is working, tossing out quotes to one enraptured person or another, about this game and that game, to dunk or to pass, to stay in this city or go to that one (no, he has no answer about Miami), to sell a sneaker, a TV, a hamburger. Savannah is not the type to do some wife dance for the enraptured people. She will avoid making eye contact if she can get away with it. She’s the seri-ous one. He’s the funny one, the charismatic, cool one. They got married last summer, having been together since high school in Akron, since way before he became King James.

“You don’t like your ice cream?” James calls to his son. Bryce looks down at the melt, up at his dad. Demoralizing. Hard

to admit. A dud of a flavor choice. “I don’t like it,” he says. »

A

M A R C H 2 0 1 4 G Q . C O M 1 5 1

1 5 2 G Q . C O M M A R C H 2 0 1 4

3.The Show-Me-the-Hardware Mogul Suit

If you’re not in touch with your inner CEO—your mogul persona, with the suit to match—get to work. Jay Z has one. So does LeBron. That’s when you want strong peak lapels and a bold business shirt like gingham.

+suit $4,280 and shirt $590 Tom Fordtie $180 Charvettie bar The Tie Barpocket square Sid Mashburn

4.A New Spin on

the Ol’ Sweater-and-Jeans Trick

Sure, you can end up looking like an

Everyman in a sweater and jeans. Or like a

king. Choice is yours. The difference is

in the details. The sweater? Chest-

broadening stripes. The jeans? White

(because everyone else has on blue).

+sweater $495

and jeans $395 Ralph Lauren

Black Label Denimbracelet Cartier

watch Audemars Piguet

+shirt $345 Michael Bastiantie $170 Thom Browne New Yorkpants $198 Unisshoes $275 Allen Edmondshat Borsalino at JJ Hat Centertie bar The Tie Bargray bracelet Hermèswatch Audemars Piguet

5.A Prep Look the Other Guys Can’t Pull Off

LeBron knows how to find his own lane, and that goes for colors as much as drives to the rack. While D-Wade likes primary colors and Westbrook electric ones, LeBron has his own signature washed-out palette—kinda like the hotels on South Beach.

“Go get something else!” James says. “Try something else. You ain’t got no complaints!”

Fatherhood, he says, is a lot like sports. “Being a leader of my household, a leader of Miami, a leader of Team USA. It’s the same exact thing. You can sense when a guy is frustrated—maybe doesn’t feel involved enough in the o≠ense. As leader you go over to him, you know, ‘How can I help?’ Because at the end of the day, we all have one common goal—and that’s to be great.”

Winning, being great, it’s the whole point of life. Is it not? Is there any reason to tiptoe around that fact? Winning, James says, is what a team does, not a person. That notion sits at his core and explains everything. The tattoo across his back, huge, shoulder to shoulder, says chosen 1. It’s not simply precocious. It’s bigger than that. It’s what happened back in Akron, an American allegory. A dirt-poor father-less nobody alone in his bed at night, hop-ing for his mom to come home, which she didn’t—for a couple of years.

All that, and now all this.Basketball took hold. In his senior year

of high school, averages of 31.6 points, 9.6 rebounds, 4.6 assists, and 3.4 steals per game. Averages. But the thing that really happened back then was a team. A fam-ily. You finally get one, you cling. All those guys. Sian, Willie, Dru on the Fighting Irish, of course, but also Maverick and Rich and Randy, all those guys who would come over his place in the projects, where his mom finally landed, $22 a month for a tiny apartment, and everyone wanted to hang there. Like a family reunion every single day, playing video games, goofing around. He says they came there because they loved his mom. They say it was because of him. “His charisma,” says Randy Mims, who back then filled the role of big brother and is now his day-to-day manager. “Everyone wanted to be around him. He was born with it. He still has it. It’s what fills arenas.”

Next thing he’s 17 years old, he’s on the cover of Sports Illustrated. A Nike contract. First overall pick in the 2003 NBA draft by the Cleveland Cavaliers.

“I go from $10 in my pocket to $100 million. In high school. Yup.”

So, second of all, regarding change, of course he’s changed. “Good! That’s like a good thing,” he says. “I’m like, ‘Thank you.’

Shit. I’m 29 years old with a family—I’m married with a family. I—of course I’ve changed. The problem is, you haven’t changed. And that’s why you dislike what I do, you know.”

He leans forward. He’s not going to be interrupted on this point. “As an African-American, we hear it a lot where we grow up. You’ve changed.” He’s sick of hearing it used as a criticism. “Because you’ve tried to better yourself and because you’ve made it out. ‘You’re not the same person that we used to know.’ Of course I’m not. I’m try-ing to better myself. Change is not a bad thing. Thinking that it’s bad, you know, that’s one thing I think is a downfall for African-Americans for sure.”

When he was still with the Cavs, he got a tattoo on his right fore-arm: 330. The Akron area code.

One person he thanks for all his success is his father. Well, it’s not actually a thanks. More of a conversation. “Like, ‘Wow, Dad, you know what, I don’t know you, I have no idea who you are, but because of you is part of the reason who I am today.’ The fuel that I use—you not being there—it’s part of the reason I grew up to become who I am. It’s part of the reason why I want to be hands-on with my endeavors. And be able to put my guys that’s with me now in position. Like Maverick Carter, my right-hand guy in my business. Rich Paul, my agent. Randy Mims, my friend—he’s my manager, you know. So me in a position allowing people around me to grow, that maybe wouldn’t have happened if I had two parents, two sisters, a dog, and a picket fence, you know?”

Change, of course, is exactly what turned James into basketball’s most hated villain for a stretch. That story occupies an indel-ible chapter in pop-culture history. He left Cleveland in 2010 to go play for Miami. The Decision. Over 13 million people watching the big obnoxious reality show, which was, he’ll remind you, to benefit the Boys & Girls Clubs of America. But still. Tone-deaf. The guys from Akron had a lot to learn about how to run a multimillion-dollar athlete’s career. “Crazy,” says Mims. “I don’t think any of us had any

M A R C H 2 0 1 4 G Q . C O M 1 5 5

6.The No-Days-Off

Approach to Loungewear

A trip to the grocery—or a flight

on the team jet—doesn’t call for a suit. But true style heroes

never phone in a look. Even LeBron’s

sweats have a meticulously modern

fit. That way, even when he’s chilling,

LeBron still posterizes the competition.

+t-shirt $294

and pants $708 Rick Owens

sneakers Balenciaga

where to buy it? go to gq.com/go

/fashiondirectories(continued on page 205)