On February 3, 2002, Michael LeBrecht, an assistant photographer for Sports Illustrated, showed up to the gym at St. Vincent-St. Mary High School and set up for an 8 a.m. photoshoot.
The subject was a high school basketball player from Akron, Ohio. To LeBrecht, the assignment was simple enough: “Just another prodigy story of a young kid that was going to be good,” he recalled thinking.
LeBrecht had maybe 90 minutes to shoot photos before a morning practice, and he worried that the teen might be late. But at just before 8 a.m., there he was — LeBron James — walking into the gym alone.
The resulting shoot produced an iconic photo that wound up on the cover of Sports Illustrated, complete with an audacious caption: “The Chosen One.” More than 22 years later, the high school jersey James was wearing that morning will be up for sale next month at a Julien’s Auctions event in Hong Kong. The jersey — which was also worn by James in a game that night, and for much of his junior season — is estimated to sell for somewhere between $1-2 million, which would set the record for a game-worn high school jersey.
Days after a Babe Ruth jersey sold for $24.12 million, breaking the record for a piece of sports memorabilia, officials at Julien’s are trying to cast the “Chosen One” jersey as a piece that could one day be in the same category.
“This storied jersey represents the pivotal moment of LeBron’s ascension to basketball royalty,” David Goodman, CEO of Julien’s Auction, said in a statement.
The auction — both live and online — is set to be held at 10 p.m. ET on Sept. 27. It includes a selection of limited-edition photo prints of James from his Sports Illustrated photo shoot.
The jersey was last up for auction in 2021, when it sold for $512,200 at Julien’s. It was first sold in 2019, when it went for $187,500 at Goldin Auctions. According to Goldin, the jersey was consigned by a former student at St. Vincent-St. Mary, who was given the jersey by James.
The day of the SI photoshoot, James was his usual dominant self in a victory over Archbishop Hoban. It was just weeks before a cover story by Sports Illustrated writer Grant Wahl introduced James — and his immense potential — to a national audience. LeBrecht was working just his fifth or sixth assignment for the magazine. He had first photographed James the previous summer at the ABCD Camp at Fairleigh Dickinson University. It was at that camp that James first burst onto the national scene, besting top recruit Lenny Cooke.
As LeBrecht recalls, the shoot lasted more than an hour and then resumed after practice. It included a series of action shots in which LeBrecht asked James to dunk “30 or 40 times,” LeBrecht said. When it was over, James cleaned up and scored 32 points.
“I don’t care who I photograph, or if I get another 100 covers or what,” LeBrecht said. “I’m never going to photograph anything more iconic than that.”
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(Top photo courtesy of Julien’s)
