The Jeff Benedict interview: What next for the world LeBron built?
WRITER TO THE GREATS: Author Jeff Benedict Pic: jeffbenedict.com
Jeff Benedict knows how to begin and tell a story, which is probably why one of the biggest publishing houses in the world has in recent years commissioned him to write the tale of the three most outstanding American male athletes of this millennium: Tiger Woods, Tom Brady and the dynasty he helped create in New England, and now, LeBron James.
Like them, heās a master of his craft.
In the diligence of his research: finding and reading and watching and listening to every previous bit of media on his subject, then interviewing over 200 people, though rarely quoting them, for reasons heāll explain.
In the vividness and execution of his writing: reading his account of the place and day Earl Wood was buried, or of the day of , from James in a convoy heading towards the private home of a talent agent in Greenwich, Connecticut, to 12 hours later wearily embracing his new general manager Pat Riley on an airport runway in night-time Miami, is almost cinematic, like watching an episode of .
And then there is how he brings characters to life, almost from their point of view, though he may never have been able to speak to them, only their associates and acquaintances.
So when you catch him from his house in Connecticut via a transatlantic Zoom call, youāre essentially privy to a masterclass. So welcome to a rare insight into the holy trinity of Woods, Brady and James, and how to capture and craft their story.
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How did the LeBron book come about? Why after undertaking such massive projects as Woods and the Patriots did you sign up for another in LeBron?
I had spent about three years working on the Tiger Woods biography. So in the five months between handing in that manuscript and the book going on sale, I went to New York to meet with my publisher about what I might do next. And my idea at that time was to write a book about the New England Patriots dynasty.
I thought they would turn it down because football books are hard to sell. But what happened was the opposite. They said, āThatās a great idea, weād be happy to offer you a contract to write that ā after you get access to one of the big three in the Patriots: either the coach, the quarterback or the owner.ā I said, āWell, that could take up to two years to build up enough of a relationship to get that kind of access.ā My publisher said, āThatās okay. In the meantime come up with a different idea.ā I said, āWell, I donāt have any other ideas ā the Patriots was my idea!ā So we reconvened a few weeks later in the same office and Iāll never forget the moment when my publisher looked at me and said, āHow about LeBron?ā And straightaway I said, āYeah.ā I didnāt even have to look at my agent beside me or take a few days to think about it and talk to my wife. It was just on the spot: Yes.
Why do you think you instinctively said yes?
Well, there are only two or three male athletes from the United States [in the past decade] who are global figures, as in people from every continent are completely intrigued by. What excited the publisher about Tiger was because he was so interesting to a lot of people who may not be particularly interested in golf. LeBron is a similarly transcendent figure. There are a lot of people around the world interested in LeBron for other reasons than just basketball. He has a Hollywood production company. He is the number one marketer for Nike. He has been very politically active. Heās had a feud with President Trump. Heās been controversial because of some of the decisions heās made with his career. When you package that all together, you have much more than just a sports book.
So you actually started on the LeBron book before you began , even though the latter came out first?
Yes. This would have been early 2018. The Patriots had just lost the Superbowl to the Philadelphia Eagles and it looked as if their dynasty was coming to an end. So while I tried to get access to the Patriots and the Tiger book came out, I was already working on LeBron.
How did you end up getting access to the Patriots?
I wrote an old-fashioned personal letter to Robert Kraft and sent it electronically to his secretary. I always looked at the Patriots like The Beatles. The Beatles built the greatest rock ānā roll band ever. But after less than a decade it split apart. Paul and John were not able to stay together the way Mick and Keith did with the Stones. If The Beatles had been able to keep the two biggest rock stars in the world on the same stage for another 10 years, how different would the rock world look today? The miracle of New England was that the kept the two biggest stars in the sport, Tom Brady and Belichick, together for 20 years. Several teams did it for a decade: the Steelers, the 49ers, the Cowboys. But the Patriots did it for 15 years and more and to me the owner was the key to that.
I had no connections to him whatsoever, so I wrote that letter: this is who I am, this is what Iād like to do and so on. And then I heard nothing. Six months went by when one day I went to my mailbox and there was a letter from Robert Kraft. He acknowledged receipt of my letter and thanked me for the copy of the Tiger book and some articles I sent to give him a flavour of what I do. He didnāt commit to anything. But a month later I got a call from a gentleman in the organisation: Would you be able to come to Foxsboro tomorrow and meet with Mr Kraft? And of course I said yes and dropped everything. And from those meetings I was allowed to be with the team throughout that whole season ā in which they would get back to the Superbowl and win.
Go back to the Tiger book. The opening chapter begins with that dramatic scene where he is locked in his bathroom, but even before that you have a prologue in which you detail the day and place where Earl Woods is buried. And then there is the killer line from the gravedigger, a Mike Mohler. Years on and the gravestone he assumed would be ordered at some stage by the family never came. āHis grave isnāt even marked at all. Itās like heās not even there.ā A few things. Why did you start the book there?
Well when we learned that, it was literally a heart-stopper. We did multiple interviews with the sexton, learning how he got a call that night at home from an anonymous person saying there was a body coming and they needed a holdup and they didnāt want to give the name of the person getting buried. Thereās all this secrecy until the person on the other end finally says itās for Tiger Woodsā father, Earl. And then thereās the fact that the father of the greatest golfer who has ever lived is buried in an obscure grave in Kansas with no marker. You couldnāt find it with a google map. That to me and [co-writer] Armen [Keteyian] said so much about the larger story we were about to tell about Tiger.
Has that marker been installed since the book came out five years ago?
It hasnāt happened to this day.
What did that scene tell you? āWow, thatās cold!ā?
Well not to oversimplify it, but what it signalled to me in really bright loud neon lines was complexity, complexity, complexity. Thereās nothing better as a storyteller to have a character who is complex, who has tension in his or her life, whose decisions are not easily understood. To me that scene had all that and itās rooted in a very complicated and misunderstood family dynamic. Tiger is an only child who described his father as his best friend and yet heās hidden in the ground in Kansas without a marker. Then you bring the mother into that equation and the complicated marriage she had with Tigerās father and all the pain and stress that was in it. Thereās so much there. And the last thing you want to do as a storyteller is unpack all of that in the first chapter. You want to give the reader just enough to draw them in, then bring them back to the beginning and explain how we got to here.
You rarely quote an interviewee in your books.
Thereās a difference between quotes and dialogue. There is a lot of dialogue in the LeBron and Tiger books with quotes around it. For instance in the opening chapter on , thereās the quote āWhat the f*** just happened here?ā because that is something that came out of LeBronās mouth in real-time. That is different than giving a quote from Joe Smith years later. Because that is not a story. That is a newspaper or magazine article. Itās not a book. When you are writing a nonfiction narrative, you want it to read like a story, like a movie. Dialogue as opposed to quotes allows the reader to feel like theyāre in the room, observing the conversation in real-time.
But you made an exception with the sexton because some of his lines were nearly too good not to use?
Yes. There are times when you have to pull back and have someone who is in the book be quoted for authoritative reasons. We open the book with him putting a tool in the ground and pulling dirt out to make a hole. And it was a really strong way to close that scene by having the sexton step out of it for a moment and offering what his perception was at the time, thinking they were going to have this big monument, and the fact then it didnāt materialise.
Plus, he was a fantastic storyteller. He was completely unguarded. And it was the same doing the book. Doing the book I interviewed a bunch of people who hadnāt much experience talking to a journalist.
Your work is quite similar to Dave Halberstamās . Your book is about LeBron and the world he made and crucially who he surrounded himself with: Rich Paul, Maverick Carter and Randy Mims who along with himself form the four horsemen that has driven his business empire.
When I was in the research phase of the book one of the things that really stood out for me was LeBronās decision-making as a teenager. He had an uncanny ability to choose friends well. Starting with Maverick Carter who he played high school basketball with for a year. And then the way he met Rich Paul by chance in an airport while LeBron was still in high school. And the question I immediately had was what was so different about a Rich Paul from all the other people LeBron had bumped into and he didnāt ask to come into his inner circle? And the amazing thing is about all these people he picked in high school to surround himself with are still with him! His girlfriend that he started dating with in his junior year in high school is now his wife. That is storybook stuff.
What do you think it says?
That heās really good at reading people and making judgements about peopleās character. LeBron could have had a lot of girls. There were a lot of girls that wanted to be with LeBron. But he picked someone who didnāt even know who he was! Who didnāt know he was this budding superstar, that he was on the cover of magazines. Who said no the first time he sent a friend to get his number for him! To me that Savannah was the girl he honed in on showed real maturity for a 16-year-old.
And the other thing it showed me is loyalty and friendship are as important to LeBron as anything. That was the one thing I heard over and over again: Thereās nothing more LeBron hates than being alone.
Tiger is the opposite. Tiger is a solitary figure. Heās not only used to being alone, heās more comfortable being alone.
Theyāre both only children, though Tiger does have some half-siblings.
True. They both grow up as only children. But LeBron has an extraordinary level of loneliness as a child. His mom is a teenager. They have no money. There are years where they havenāt a home or place to live. Theyāre always on the move. He misses 100 days of school as a fourth grader. So it makes sense that one of the things he longs for more than anything is a family and friends. And it is one of the reasons heās being able to play 20 years at the highest level of fame and not get into any trouble or scandal that trips up so many other athletes. Heās so protective of his basketball career he would never do anything to jeopardise it.
You dedicate the book to Gary, your dad, who you didnāt have a relationship with for a long period in your life. You now have a great relationship with him. How was it for you to write this book as someone who hadnāt a relationship with his father about someone who either doesnāt know or want to know who his father is?
I think every writer, whether he or she wants to admit or acknowledge it, is informed by his or her own life experiences. And with this book I knew a significant question from the outset was the identity of LeBronās father. There were a number of journalists who I spoke to early on when I was ramping up, doing the research, who I wonāt say were pushing me but were trying to impress upon me the importance of getting to the bottom of that mystery.
But as I got deeper into the project I started to form my own perception of how I should deal with it. And then a writer who I really respect a lot and who has a lot of wisdom said to me, āThatās not the story here. The story is the mother ā not the missing father. If I were doing this I would focus on the relationship between Gloria and the son.ā And the nice thing about that was it solidified in my mind the way my heart was feeling. And by the time I got to the end I felt really good about going that way.
It was definitely influenced by my own experience. I knew who my dad was but I didnāt have any relationship with him until I was in my forties. So I was older than LeBron is right now at 38 when I connected with my dad in a meaningful way. And when I did I learned ā and it was a hard thing to learn ā that most of the perceptions I had about him and why he was absent in my life all those years were wrong! I also learned through that experience that sometimes that young people can get pregnant and maybe not be in love and get married for the wrong reasons and that sometimes there are good reasons why some of that history gets buried. And should remain buried unless the people who are specifically involved in that history decide they want to open it up. And as a biographer I was sensitive to that. Sometimes you have to set your own boundaries about where youāre going to go and I just felt this was the right decision. āYeah, I could go there but I donāt think I should.āĀ
So do you think it was because it was this particular subject that you dedicated this particular book to your dad?
Thereās no question. I dedicated this to my father after I finished writing it because it seemed very appropriate. Iām not comparing my upbringing to LeBronās, there are significant differences, but thereās certainly a parallel there: when you donāt have a relationship with your father, only one with your mom and sheās basically telling you what Gloria said to LeBron. āNever mind him! Never mind that!ā And so I did. I never minded him, and in the process grew to resent him until I decided to connect with him.
And one of the things that scared me a bit and I was very keenly aware of doing this project was how easily I could get this part of LeBronās life wrong. The last thing I wanted to do was destroy the whole book. The entire credibility and tone of the book could have been ruined by writing something I didnāt have the answer to and would probably get wrong. So why would you do that?
Heās still doing it an elite level, playing now with the Lakers in the western conference finals, chasing a fifth NBA ring, though heās now 38 and a half. What do you think LeBron James will be doing five, ten years from now?
Iād imagine in five years he will not be playing professional basketball anymore. He will own an NBA team. He will likely be heavily involved in the entertainment world, having an even larger footprint in Hollywood than he has now. I guess the question is at some point does he have an interest in entering politics.
Do you think he would be good at it?
I think he would be really good at it. He has all the skills. Heās a natural leader. Heās not a bully. He knows how to work with people that are diverse. Heās a good communicator. And he can forgive and move on. When he was willing to go back [in 2014] to Cleveland and [owner] Dan Gilbert [who had written a scathing public letter in 2010 after Jamesās decision to leave for Miami], he said, āWho am I to hold a grudge?ā
It was nearly Mandela-like.
Yeah. Thereās a difference between a politician and a statesman. America is full of politicians and theyāre terrible. We have very few statesmen. Statesmen are people that donāt hold on to grudges.
There is a very limited history of athletes in this country who successfully go from sports to politics. Bill Bradley, the New York Knicks basketball player, became a distinguished US senator. There arenāt many other examples. But LeBron could be a very effective political leader. I have no idea if he is remotely interested, but if he ever wanted to, I think thereās a lane open to him that is not open to other athletes.
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