Before LeBron James became the legendary NBA player that he is today, he was one of the most promising high school players at the time. His St. Vincent-St. Mary High School coach Keith Dambrot knew it and wanted Sonny Vaccaro, Adidas executive and founder of the ABCD Camp, to see him.

They traveled to San Francisco and Dambrot recalled the LA Lakers star struggling on the court, appearing distracted with his shorts. Dambrot felt James was jeopardizing his future, and also a potential deal. He chastised the young LeBron James and shared the story on NBA insider Brian Windhorst’s ‘The Hoop Collective‘:

“So, we’re playing at the University of San Francisco, and if anyone knows LeBron, he kind of beats to his own drum, whatever he feels like, he does. (44:19)

“And so we’re playing and I don’t know whether his shorts were too big or he just didn’t feel like playing, but he was messing with the shorts the whole time and he wasn’t playing very good.

“So I took him out on the hallway and said, ‘LeBron, do you know who that guy is?’ And he says, ‘Yeah.’ I said, ‘Well, you know you’re going to cost yourself millions of dollars if you [don’t] quit messing around,’ and that probably wasn’t the term I used, as most of you know.”

LeBron James talked about the building blocks set by former high school coach for his development

“Coach Dambrot set the foundation for me; it was all fundamentals,” James said. “Dru and I were trying to get better and better and here was this coach willing to work with us.”