Jayne Kamin-Oncea- USA Today Sports

Apparently winning consecutive championships isn’t enough. According to ESPN, LeBron James is in discussions with Starz about co-producing a sitcom about the challenges of living in the inner city. The premise of the show revolves around two men from the streets who have attained fame and fortune. One of the men becomes an NBA star while the other receives fame elsewhere, and the show focuses on how their friends and families accept and deal with their success.

 ”I think the main thing for me is, first of all, making it out of a place where you’re not supposed to. You’re supposed to be a statistic and end up like the rest of the people in the inner city — [and] being one of the few to make it out and everyone looking at you to be the savior,” James said in a phone interview last week. “When you make it out, everyone expects — they automatically think that they made it out and it’s very tough for a young, African-American 18-year-old kid to now hold the responsibility of a whole city, of a whole community. I can relate to that as well”. (James, ESPN)

The show will be based in North Philadelphia and is not a reflection of James’ life growing up. All of the characters are fictional and live in a fictitious world, but they experience real world problems, which should make the show that much more appealing. James will be developing the show alongside longtime friend Maverick Carter and Tom Werner, who produced sitcom hits “The Cosby Show” and “Roseanne”.

If all goes well, the show should be a moderate success. James typically doesn’t invest in a project if he doesn’t see potential. The base storyline seems interesting enough, but we will have to wait and see who is cast to play these fictional characters. It could be a hit or a complete disaster.

Jared Doyle is a Miami Heat writer for www.RantSports.com.

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