Buzz Bissinger: Any hatred of LeBron is insane

LeBron James is a changed man, at least in the eyes of Pulitzer Prize-winning author Buzz Bissinger. Bissinger, author of Friday Night Lights and co-author of Shooting Stars (with James), sat down with the awesome folks at Longform.org to discuss life, writing, and his recent breakdown which led to a stint in rehab. But amidst all of the introspective discussion, Bissinger (who says he’s not a sportswriter) discussed his book with the four-time MVP (which he once called an “epic failure”) and his feelings on the man he once tore apart in a Twitter tirade.

I thought it was a good story. The problem with that book was that it was too early in his career—he wasn’t liked. He’s liked now. … He had never won a championship, he was young, he didn’t understand what it entailed. The difficulty was that it was his book—he could do anything he wants. I don’t think there’s a real controversial story with LeBron; LeBron’s a pretty simple—LeBron is very smart, he’s very intuitive, he’s very savvy, but his backstory isn’t really that complicated. He’s not a kid who looked for trouble, he didn’t like to get in trouble. The one thing about LeBron is he hated being alone. He hated being alone because he was left alone.

I wasn’t surprised he went back for several reasons. I think he likes to shake things up. He does love that area. I think he wanted the idea of sort of starting from scratch. I don’t know how much LeBron liked that constant pressure of ‘you should win every year.’ It’s a lot of pressure. I don’t think LeBron’s the type of guy who will play for 20 years, I just don’t. I think he’ll play for five more years and be like, ‘I want to do something different—I want to be like Magic Johnson and own a baseball team.’ The guy has very big ambitions. I was very critical of him in the beginning. I was in that bad period of Twitter being a shithead to everyone and being a real bombastic shmuck. I also realized the hatred of LeBron is insane. He’s really been a pretty good citizen and has become a good spokesman for the league.

Following Shooting Stars’ release in 2009, Bissinger went public with feelings that he had “sold out” in co-writing a book in which he had little editorial control. “I never felt comfortable writing a book for someone else, but the money was too good and I didn’t want to piss [James] off,” he said.

The entire podcast—all one hour, forty minutes of it—is worth your time if you have any interest in writing, great writers, books (especially Friday Night Lights) or what Bissinger thinks LeBron’s lone fault is. We’ve embedded it below.