Nothing sweet about LeBron's entourage

JUST when you start getting a bit down-in-the-dumps about the recession and so on, a sportsman comes forward to lift your spirits.

Step forward, Mr LeBron James!

 Like a one-man version of the IDA, LeBron is helping to keep unemployment down in the eastern states of the US by maintaining an entourage, the loose description usually draped over the hangers-on found orbiting a star in the sports or entertainment businesses - or maybe the intersection of both: the spotainment business?

Anyway, yesterday it all went wrong for said followers as the basketball megastar rocked up to the Cleveland Cavaliers’ home arena for a shoot around earlier this week, his entourage was denied entrance (there’s a backstory, of course - James left the Cavaliers recently for the Miami Heat, a departure which went down badly in Cleveland, hence the likely joy taken by the jobsworth on the gate in turning away the player’s pals).

James was eventually left in to take his practice shots, but we leave it to you to imagine the good grace with which he accepted this dent to his ego.

Reference to the entourage put us in mind of happier times, however.

While every two-bit rap star and actor has a collection of people at his or her beck and call nowadays - hence the superb TV series of the same name - few people know the origin of the term, or that it arrived into common usage thanks to sports in the first place.

Ray Robinson, a boxer so sweet he had to have the nickname ‘Sugar’ affixed to his name, wasn’t just one of the greatest fighters of all time. In a considerable heyday which stretched from the  ’40s through to the ’50s, Robinson had a collection of people trailing in his wake.

 There was a manager, sparring partners and trainers - the usual accoutrements of the pro boxer.

However, Robinson was also accompanied by a personal valet, a masseur, a barber and a short person - ‘midget’ was the term of the day - who served as a combination camp mascot and interpreter  (students of the exact parameters of the entourage are divided over the inevitable cast of beautiful women acting as outriders - members of the entourage or not? Decide for yourself).

In any event, Robinson is generally credited with founding the entourage as must-have accessory for the modern sports star.

 And that’s the official term. On one of his many overseas trips the boxer landed in France in 1951, where a liner steward, impressed by the group trailing behind him, referred to it as his ‘entourage’ with full Gallic emphasis.

Robinson liked the term and used it himself about his followers. It became part of his legend, along with the 200 professional fights between 1940 and 1965, the world titles at welter- and middle-weight, and the pink Cadillac he used to tootle around Manhattan.

And by the way, a lesson for LeBron James: nobody ever stopped Sugar Ray Robinson or his entourage from going anywhere.

Source: http://feeds.examiner.ie/~r/iesportsblog/~3/aLBpBCgg9gU/post.aspx

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