Shooting Stars Audiobook

From the ultimate team—basketball superstar LeBron James and Buzz Bissinger, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Friday Night Lights and Three Nights in August—a poignant, thrilling tale of the power of teamwork to transform young lives, including James’s own The Shooting Stars were a bunch of kids—LeBron James and his best friends—from Akron, Ohio, 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 that would carry them through thick and thin (a lot of thin) and, at last, to a national championship in their senior year of high school. 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 ten. 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 was ever present; he 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 teammates offered him. In the summer after seventh grade, the Shooting Stars 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 one another they would stay together and do whatever it took to win a national title. They had no idea how hard it would be to fulfill 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 consequences of their own overconfidence. 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, and together they claimed the prize they had fought for all those years—a national championship. Shooting Stars is a stirring depiction of the challenges that face America’s youth today and a gorgeous evocation of the transcendent impact of teamwork.

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"This is the story of what we call King James here in Cleveland. It is wrote in a simple manner and you can feel the love, passion, frustration of his growin up years in this writing. His life didn't start easy, he had to fight for his own every day but God put people in his path, who kept from just being another poor boy from the projects gone bad. The friends he found along the way are still his true friends, and no matter what they stuck together like glue. For young men who are struggling, don't know to follow thier dream or just need hope this is the book to give to them. He was frank and truthful in this book, a very short sentence mentions pot use and getting drunk in his late teenage years, but so much of the media jumped on it. It really wasn't worth all that. And yes probably the Hummer was the wrong thing to give him for a present at 18, but his mom did it out of love for her son that always showed respect. And the people who gave her the loan was betting that he was going to the NBA and money wouldn't be an issue. Now if he would of not made it, then it would of been repo'd. And the jerseys he got, well he was a wide eye teenager and was in awe about the jerseys, how was he to know it was wrong? He was 17 and was an instant made celebrity to the media, but to him he wanted to hang with his friends and play ball. He wrote this book to share his life with the world, but some things he keeps private and we should respect that. He admits where he made mistakes and even in taking credit he shares the limelight with others."

— Teresa (5 out of 5 stars)