Hanging out and talking basketball with LeBron James last month in Los Angeles proved to be a memorable retirement gift for fellow Akron native Keith Dambrot .
Dambrot has been feeling plenty of love this year from James and the rest of the "Fab Five" he coached at St. Vincent-St. Mary High School before he piloted the men's hoops programs at the University of Akron for 13 seasons and Duquesne University for the past seven seasons.
The group's deep appreciation for Dambrot was among the central themes Thursday night during the "Fab Five" sports dinner at House Three Thirty in Akron. The event will benefit the Shaw Jewish Community Center and The Lippman School, and the connection is fitting because the JCC on White Pond Drive is where Dambrot first gave hoops lessons to Dru Joyce III , who brought James as a guest to some of the workouts.
"Had I not met Dru at the JCC and if they didn't let me use the gym, maybe none of it would ever happen," Dambrot told the Beacon Journal after the "Fab Five" event.
But it did happen.
Dambrot, 65, guided STVM to two state championships in as many seasons before he left for UA and turned the high school team over to Joyce's father, Dru Joyce II. STVM won another state crown in 2003, the same year the "Fab Five" of James, Joyce III, Romeo Travis, Sian Cotton and Willie McGee graduated from the school. Those players (sans James), Dambrot and Joyce II took trips down memory lane while speaking on stage during the sports dinner moderated by WAKR radio host Ray Horner.
When Dambrot decided he would retire from coaching after Duquesne's 2023-24 season ( Joyce III succeeded him ), Dambrot's wife, Donna, received a phone call about an idea for a gift.
"It's typical LeBron and Maverick [Carter] and these guys in general," Dambrot said. "They called my wife and they said, 'Hey, we want to get coach a present. What can we get him?' Donna said, 'Well, let me think about it.' And she said, 'He'd probably just like to hang out with you guys, watch some practice, go to a game.' So they flew me out there."
Dambrot attended Los Angeles Lakers practice, two games against the Cavaliers and Minnesota Timberwolves on April 6 and 7 and visited James' house in California. Dambrot also became the first guest to appear on "Mind the Game," a new podcast about the intricacies of basketball co-hosted by James and former NBA player JJ Redick.
"They were doing [the podcast] that week, so it just worked out," Dambrot said. "I thought it was nice of them because I'm just a college coach that nobody's ever heard of."
Two episodes before Dambrot appeared on the podcast, James used the platform to talk about his old coach. On the heels of STVM going 27-0 and seizing the Division III state crown when James was a freshman, Dambrot kicked James out of the first practice before his sophomore season, the NBA's all-time scoring leader told Redick on their podcast.
"I came in as the projected No. 1 player in the state of Ohio," James said on "Mind the Game." "I was projected to be an All American as a sophomore, projected to be Mr. Basketball as a sophomore, which had never been done in Ohio high school history. And the first practice we had our sophomore year after the winning a state championship, I did absolutely nothing wrong coming out of football, he kicked me out of practice.
"I had no idea why the f*** he kicked me out of practice, and I think he was just setting the tone for the season. Like ... wherever you think you are, I've heard all of this stuff about how great you are, and [it was, like], 'Nope, I'm going to humble your ass right now.' He kicked me out of practice, and the last thing he said to me when he kicked me out of practice the first day of practice, he said, 'Best sophomore in the country my ass.'"
James and Dambrot can laugh about the story now.
"You know what's funny is I remember saying, 'Best sophomore in the country my ass,' I remember that, but I don't remember kicking him out," Dambrot said. "So his memory is probably better than mine."
Dambrot explained he was motivated to help a young James, 39, stay on track to stardom.
"There's always a method behind my madness," Dambrot said. "My thing was he's a great kid, but I've never been more nervous in my life about getting somebody from point A to point B because I knew he was great. I knew he was a pro, and I knew there were only certain things that could get in his way, like a lack of humility, drugs, alcohol, pregnancy. So I just tried to hit him between eyes almost like a dentist — preventative dentistry.
"I knew he was going to make a lot of money. I didn't know he'd be this. You never know that, but I knew he was a pro. So I just didn't want him to flush it down the toilet. He's a good guy. That's the thing about him. He's a good human being."
What people who know James well also point out is he's a basketball genius. The listeners of his podcast are gaining more insight along those lines.
"People don't realize there's a lot of great athletes, and there's a lot of guys with great skill, but there will never be one like him," Dambrot said. "There may be one better. I'm not saying that. But there will never be a player exactly like him, and most of it is as freakish as he is physically, the mental side is what makes him better than everybody else."
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Dambrot pushed his players to be their best, and they haven't forgotten it. He also uplifted Joyce II and reassured him he would succeed at STVM. The elder Joyce conceded he initially doubted himself when he replaced Dambrot, yet he has won seven state titles as the program's head coach.
"He's been my mentor, and I think that sometimes that gets lost," Joyce II told the audience at House Three Thirty about Dambrot. "Everyone wants to understand that he was hard on these [players] but, more than that, he loved them."
The relationship Dambrot and Joyce III built at the JCC led the point guard to STVM when he chose the private school over Buchtel . The younger Joyce and his friends who played AAU with one another wanted to stick together. And they did.
"I felt like he was the best person to not only coach me but us," Joyce III told the audience. "I had been around him the [previous] couple years, and I knew his intensity, his intent, his brain was what we needed."
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When Dambrot left STVM for the Akron job, the move angered Joyce III and Cotton, they said.
"As a kid, I didn't understand it. I didn't want to understand it. That's probably the main thing," Cotton said on stage. "And it took me well into my early 20s. I'll be honest. I'm a little bit petty. It took me into my early 20s to kind of forgive him. When I had kids, and I'm like, 'Oh, yeah, OK, you've got to take care of your family,' that's when I started to understand."
Of course, Joyce III and Travis later reunited with Dambrot and forged legacies as Zips.
"After my junior year, I was trying to decide on which college I was going to go to," Travis told the crowd. "I had two scholarships on the table, and I get a phone call from Coach Dambrot, and this is his recruiting pitch to me.
"I said, 'Hello.' He said, 'Rome.' I said, 'What's up, Coach?' [He said], 'Sign the damn papers,' and he hung up! That's all it took, and that's how I ended up at the University of Akron instead of another university."
Nate Ulrich can be reached at nulrich@thebeaconjournal.com. On Twitter: @ByNateUlrich .
This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: LeBron James hosts Keith Dambrot and makes coach first podcast guest
