Akron, City of Lebron’s Mom and Education Thief Williams-Bolar

To utilize a commodity or service to its end point for the greatest profit is capitalism at its finest.

This is essentially what Cleveland Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert and the poor State of Ohio wanted to do to Lebron James.

You hear the formula via mainstream radio everyday. It’s that song played 100 times on the radio, the type of style the artist is using when performing: i.e: Autotune, the fashionable sense of the artist who recorded the song, and even the marketing model used to have the song played 100 times. It’s a good ride for the company that owns the artist’s contract up until the song and/or the artist is deemed over played by the listening public.

For basketball and particularly the NBA, it’s the athlete’s marketability of athletic clothing and sneakers, soft drinks, food, and of course tickets at the gate and deals related to network broadcasting and commercials. This is all of what the Cleveland Cavaliers and Ohio missed when they lost Lebron James, the biggest basketball player since Michael Jordan to the Miami Heat. For what seemed like a noble reason and respectable cause, James just wanted to have fun playing the game with his friends, lessening his shadow over other players by joining a team that already has a superstar in Dwayne Wade and a new offensive juggernaut in Chris Bosh. Talk about unselfishness, the megastar even gave up his jersey number. Those are coveted. Well, it would seem that sports owners, commentators, and even fans all over were really just racist scum back when they berated Black athletes about being too selfish and not investing in the team and just having fun playing the game. Because now, Lebron is a sellout, and ironically, Gilbert now believes James is “selfish”. Fact is he took a $15 million pay cut to play in Miami.

Yet, if the Cleveland Cavaliers’ organization had it to do all over again they would sign another Lebron in a heartbeat. The formula begins by taking one single Black mother’s super-talented kid and then add better education. This is the beginning of Lebron’s path to greatness all the way from Akron, OH. James received an opportunity to bypass all the shitty public schools in Akron. Gloria James was able to help her school-age son escape their impoverished transient life which led them to move from neighborhood to neighborhood. The Akron legend goes that Lebron "King" James was not only provided a scholarship to St. Vincent-St. Mary of Akron, OH like some gifted students are given but he was able to bring his team from middle school, including the coach. The draw for Lebron's mom who allowed Lebron to attend SVSM was based purely on educational merits. Of SVSM, 99% of their students pursue 4-year degrees and 65% of their graduates are awarded college scholarships. This is in contrast to Akron’s public high schools which are below Ohio's standards in ever subject.

Lebron James began making money for SVSM the first year he began attending, starting with television deals designed to focus on his four years of gameplay. He was making corporations money all throughout high school, helping Sports Illustrated sell millions of papers by gracing its cover as the “Chosen One”. By the time he was a junior, his friends were Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, and Michael Finley and he was in the middle of a multi-million dollar bidding war between Nike and Adidas.

This was bigger than basketball.

Well, actually, this is just basketball. Because 12 years after Lebron’s skills earned him a ticket to one of the best schools in Akron and on to becoming a megastar a woman with no priors was released after serving a ten-day sentence for trying to sneak her children an education in another city, Copley-Fairlawn, just 3 miles west of her city of Akron. Kelley Williams-Bolar was convicted of falsifying residential school records to compensate for her daughters’ lack of height, muscle mass, shooting and passing skills, ball-handling, the ability to see the floor and all those other things a b-ball recruiter looks for in a talented male.

While you can’t knock Lebron for winning a trip out of the ghetto, what is it to say to the city of Akron upon leaving to Miami: “You can be sure that I will continue to do everything that I can for this city” if he hasn’t been heard championing Williams-Bolar’s children’s right to a decent education. After all, what's the difference between Gloria and Kelley? They are both single mothers raising Black babies with an interest in solidifying a quality education. Except, they chose the option capitalism afforded them: Brothers can play some ball!

If Williams-Bolar was afforded a similar opportunity to James to keep her children in an academically rich school environment in Akron, I believe she would have jumped at the chance because there still is no capitalist blueprint for young women with no basketball talent in the ‘hood. Well...ok, that's not age-appropriate. What is it that Gloria James and St. Vincent-St. Mary’s recruiter know about Akron's horrible educational system that school and city officials and even the judge and prosecutor in Williams-Bolar's trial not know about? I imagine the discussion between SVSM's recruiter and James boiled down to one simple question: “Would you like your son to attend this exceptional academic private institution for free or attend one of those awful public schools in your district with inadequate funding?”

In describing his mother's reasons to relocate her son 12 times all within Akron Lebron James once said in an interview, “I saw drugs, guns, killings; it was crazy…” According to Jeneba Ghatt of the Washington Times, Akron’s neighborhoods are still “crime-ridden”. Until there is a way Williams-Bolar’s children can be milked in a recurring pattern providing the state untold millions in private partnerships or maybe the school a cable tv contract, those little girls will sit right there in Akron's public school institution. After all, can these sisters even dunk.