National Basketball Association

LeBron James believes he knows who the NBA's next big star is

Published Nov. 15, 2016 3:12 p.m. ET

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Aaron Torres

After years of spending previous off-seasons playing for Team USA and starring in hit movies (how did ‘Trainwreck’ not win an Oscar?), it’s been a relatively quiet summer for LeBron James. Outside of discussing the ‘ghosts’ of Chicago, and attending the occasional Drake concert, King James has essentially been off everyone’s radar.

That began to change earlier this week though, when he made a surprise appearance on ‘The Uninterrupted’ podcast, sitting down for over an hour, to discuss just about everything. There, he made some news, when he said he’d one day like to own an NBA team, however, it was at the end of the podcast where things really got interesting.

There, the hosts hit him with rapid-fire questions, ranging from his favorite music groups, to where he likes to eat on the road.

But maybe the most interesting question was this: Who does he believe is the next, big NBA star currently under the radar? His answer was both surprising, and not surprising at the same time.

Again, the answer is both surprising and not surprising at the same time.

The reason it’s surprising is because, well, it would have been easy for Booker to fall under the radar in the eyes of LeBron. After all, the Cavs only played Phoenix twice last season, and Booker was good, but hardly great in either game against LeBron. In the first game Booker tallied 10 points when the two squads met in Phoenix, and just a few weeks later he went for 16 in the return matchup in Cleveland. It wasn’t until much later in the year when Booker hit his stride, scoring 20 or more points in nine of the Suns' last 20 games, including four separate 30+ point performances.

At the same time it isn’t surprising, since we also know that LeBron is a huge fan of basketball and watches it quite often even when he’s not playing. So in that case it should be no surprise that LeBron pointed out Booker as a future star, especially considering that Booker closed the season on such a hot streak. Not to mention, in the process he also became the fourth youngest player in NBA history to reach 1,000 points, falling behind only LeBron himself, Kobe Bryant and Kevin Durant.

So yeah, you can see why LeBron is so high on Booker.

And frankly, why so many others are as well.

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