For LeBron James, JAY-Z’s recent appearance at Yankee Stadium stirred memories that have little to do with concerts or celebrity. Looking back more than two decades, James says the rapper and business mogul helped shape the way he thinks about leadership, opportunity, and long-term success. Moreover, speaking during CNBC Sport and Boardroom’s Game Plan Summit, the Lakers star reflected on meeting Jay-Z as a teenager. He described an encounter that quietly influenced the direction of his career away from the court.
James first crossed paths with JAY-Z in Chicago at 16 before spending time around him later that summer in New York. Instead of trying to impress him or ask for advice, James said he and his friends simply watched. Additionally, they paid attention to the way he carried himself, listened to how he spoke, and noticed the confidence with which he approached every interaction. They believed there was as much to learn from observation as conversation.
“We didn’t say much. We didn’t ask for much. We just sat there,” said James. “And he moved how a person that know who he is and what he brings to the table is supposed to move, and from the business side, to the way he walked, to the way he talked, to the way he greeted people. It was just an aura about him and a professionalism in his respective genre that we all kind of learned, and we all kind of took to this point now.”
LeBron Credits JAY-Z With Changing His Business Mindset
He continued, “Literally, my first summer was—with them was ‘The Blueprint’ album 25 summers ago. So, man, he’s been one of my biggest inspirations. I say M.J. was my biggest inspiration as far as basketball, but I never got an opportunity to hang with him or talk to him or whatever. But Jay is like my big brother. He’s the one who’s given me so much game and has taught me so much. And I’m always thinking about him any time I’m doing something business-wise or making a decision or whatever, thinking like, is this going to make him proud or—because he gave me so much game as a 16-year-old kid.”
Those early lessons, James said, still guide many of the decisions he makes today. Rather than measuring success solely by financial outcomes, he credits JAY-Z with teaching him the importance of recognizing personal value before entering any room. “You see everything that he’s doing from—obviously, the music speaks for itself, but all the business ventures and everything that he’s doing, being able to understand what you bring to the table and not taking less. And I’m not talking a monetary thing. I’m just saying, when I walk into the room, he understood his position of power and how to use that as leverage for the betterment of himself and the people around him.”
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