James Has His Followers

CLEVELAND

At the Olivet Institutional Baptist Church on Quincy Avenue, on the fringes of East Cleveland, the guest minister's voice rose with fervor on Sunday morning.

"We worship at the cathedral of entertainment," warned Peter Matthews, "where athletes and rock stars are high priests and high priestesses."

The pastor looked prescient if you drove 15 minutes toward downtown. An entire building's facade is dedicated to a black-and-white mural of LeBron James. The basketball is held aloft like a torch pointed toward the heavens.

"We Are All Witnesses," reads the most visible symbol of Nike's ad campaign for James, Cleveland's 21-year-old wunderkind, the NBA's best young player since Magic Johnson.

"I am a witness!" boomed the public-address announcer at the Quicken Loans Arena. It was Saturday, Game 1 of the Cavaliers-Wizards first-round series, the day James became only the second player in five decades to record double-figures in points (32), rebounds (11) and assists (11) in his first postseason game.

The announcer hollered in the manner of a baritone Baptist preacher, and much of the Cavaliers' congregation hollered back. They wore black T-shirts with little white swooshes under the word "Witness."

In Cleveland, you don't merely talk about James's talent and promise; you give testimonials. You witness.

It's enough to make a man of the cloth exclaim, "Can't the kid just be a great ballplayer!"

"Yeah, it crosses the line, mixing the two," said Douglas Brister, 60, a 50-year parishioner at Olivet. "One's Biblical, the other plays basketball. What kind of message are we sending to kids when we say, 'You ain't gotta go to college, you can be rich and famous anyway?' But that's just me. Younger folks might feel different."

Matthews, an African Methodist Episcopal minister, threw his arms up in resignation. "What do you do about that?" he said. "It's not LeBron's fault. But as much as we're having fun with the Biblical references, no one is having any constructive engagement about where the lines should be drawn."

Religious connotation and meaning in relation to sports has a long and storied history, dating from the old Colosseum, where the final was Lions 101, Christians 0.