CLEVELAND -- LeBron James has something to go along with his sore right knee: a twisted tongue.
On Tuesday, the Cavaliers star was reading a children's book to 23 elementary students as part of the NBA's "Read to Achieve" program when he got stumped by a tricky name in Dr. Seuss' "Oh, the Places You'll Go."
After plopping down in a yellow beanbag chair, James read to
sixth graders from Raymond Elementary School in Maple Heights,
Ohio, a class that won a contest by logging the most minutes read
in a one-month period.
James invited a few kids to sit with him to read the text
stuffed with familiar Seuss' rhymes. On the last page, James
paused, smiled and said, "I'm not even going to try that name"
when he got tangled up with the second part of: "Be your name
Buxbaum or Bixby or Bray or Mordecai Ali Van Allen O'Shea, you're
off to Great Places!"
After the reading session, he and the kids used construction
paper, pipe cleaners, ribbons and other art supplies to decorate
Seuss-inspired crowns for "King James."
Earlier, James, one of the league's premier in-game dunkers,
explained his reasons for declining an invitation to participate in
this year's All-Star dunk contest. He has turned it down three
years in a row.
"I'm not a slam-dunk-competition-type of guy," said James, who
won the only dunk contest he ever entered following his senior
season in high school. "On the spur of the moment, I can do dunks
during the game. I can't think of a dunk before I do it. I'll leave
it up to the guys who don't play as many minutes as I do. Those
guys can go out there and throw the ball between their legs and
stuff."
Asked to pick a winner, James first mentioned Atlanta's Josh Smith, who will be defending his dunk title, and then New York's 5-foot-9 guard, Nate Robinson.
"Watch out for him, too, being as small as he is, he could be another Spud Webb."
Webb, a 5-foot-7 guard, won the contest in 1986.