It was March 15, 2008, when Mike James became a star. In Eugene, Oregon, the capital of American track and fields, the state tournament basketball final was scheduled between the Grant High School of Portland and the heavy favorite team of Oregon City. Grant, a number 8 seed in the bracket, won 63-56: the exclamation mark was a thunderous dunk by Mike James. That evening he had 17 points with 7 for 13 from the field. Mike Moser, who would later be heavily recruited by the best colleges on the west coast and finished at UCLA, was the only one who did better than him. As for James, 1.85 in height, he got a call from Eastern Arizona, a junior college.
Tony Broadous was the coach of Grant High School when James set for goals considered too high for his skills. He was a player full of energy and heart, with a lot of pride but with clear limits that only in his last year they would have partly disappeared. Mike Moser went to UCLA, Paul McCoy, the team’s third star, went to Pepperdine. James received the call from Maurice Leitzke, who just signed at Thatcher in Arizona but had no players on his roster except a guy who knew Mike well. That’s how he found himself in Eastern Arizona. MJ scored 20.0 points per game in the first year and 26.0 in the second, he was the fourth best scorer of all junior colleges in America. “He matured so quickly that his athleticism progressed monthly,” said Leitzke to the Oregonian. Leitzke was the first to see James as an NBA-caliber talent, or at least good enough high-level European teams. It was mainly about having an opportunity.
After two years, any junior college experience ends: those with better skills can complete the four-year cycle by moving to a first division university. James was recruited by Lamar, Texas, located in Beaumont, on the Gulf of Mexico. The coach was Steve Roccaforte (now he is at Virginia Tech): he wanted the best scoring guard available. He contacted him by phone and when James confessed that he had no serious offer, Roccaforte proposed him to go to Lamar. James fearing that even that opportunity could vanish. without hesitation indicated the fax number to receive the documents and signed for Lamar on the spot. In his first season he scored 52 points in a game against Louisiana, setting the new school record. It was his eighth Division One game.
In his second season, Pat Knight – the son of the great Bobby Knight, winner three NCAA championships at Indiana, and of the Olympic gold in Los Angeles 1984 – became head coach at Lamar. James scored 29 points against Kentucky who would win the NCAA title and had players like Anthony Davis, Michael Kidd-Gilchrist, Darius Miller and Terrence Jones who also comes from Portland. He was also included in the All-Southland Conference first team and was named MVP of the tournament that sent Lamar to the NCAA Tournament after beating McNeese State in the final game. James scored 26 points that night.
Despite the 52 record-points scored in one game, the 29 that he scored against a Kentucky team full of NBA players, despite the Oregon state championship that he won, and that of the Southland conference, in spite of his amazing ability to play well in big games as he would have shown later, Mike James went unnoticed in the 2012 NBA draft. That’s how he began his personal journey of the world. First in Croatia, at KK Zagreb, he averaged 19.1 points per game in nine games and was immediately called to a higher-level team, in Israel, at Galil Elyon. He had another 13 games and 22.8 points per outing. Enough to go play for a big club: right? Wrong! In 2013/14 he played in Italy, but we are talking about Omegna, in a minor league. He scored 22.7 points per game with 5.2 assists, he was the easy MVP of the league, his coach was Giampaolo Di Lorenzo. Fabrizio Lorenzi, now a journalist in Italy, at the time a team-manager at Omegna, was responsible for bringing him to Omegna. In 2014 he was called by the Kolossus Rhodes in Greece: he appeared in just eight games, averaged 21.0 points per game and here came the turning point of his story. He moved mid-season to Vitoria, in the Spanish league, a huge team, and especially he landed in the EuroLeague.
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