LeBron James famously went straight from high school to the NBA. However, had he played college basketball, would he have been a Cincinnati Bearcat?
“I loved Cincinnati, with (Steve) Logan and Ruben Patterson and Kenyon Martin and all those guys,” James said on a recent episode of his “Mind the Game” podcast. “Then when Kenny Satterfield stepped in, DerMarr Johnson. I remember as a kid watching that, when I was growing up I wanted to go to Cincinnati because of the uniforms and because of (Bob Huggins).”
Johnson, who averaged 12.6 points for the Bearcats’ 1999-2000 team that went 29-4, responded to James’ comment on Instagram.
“Every time I see (LeBron) he shows me crazy love. Since his rookie year and came back from my accident till today. Imagine if he went to the Nati,” Johnson wrote.
Johnson’s basketball career nearly came to an end when he suffered four cracked vertebrae in his neck in a Sept. 13, 2002, car crash. But he went on to play in five more NBA seasons, seven in total.
James went to the Cleveland Cavaliers No. 1 overall in the 2003 NBA draft, so if he would have played college basketball for just one season it would have been during the 2003-04 campaign. The Bearcats, led by Jason Maxiell and Tony Bobbitt, went 25-7 that season and finished 11th in the final AP poll.
