Bristol Flyers forward VJ King doesn’t need long to deliberate on who the best player he has ever played with or against.
“I think that obviously would be LeBron. I shouldn’t have to go into too much detail as to why! He is one of the greatest to ever do it, so it’s easily him.”
In 2011, Vincent King Jr was starting his sophomore year at St. Vincent-St. Mary High School in Akron, Ohio. He had already led the school’s basketball team, nicknamed the Fighting Irish, to the state finals. In the process, he became the first freshman to start on the team since another ‘King’ - the all-time leading points scorer in NBA history, LeBron James.
Now King was set to not only share that accolade with the four-time NBA champion, but a court.
A bitter dispute between players and team owners over salaries, amongst other things, had resulted in the fourth and most recent NBA lockout, delaying the start of the season by almost two months.
During this time James and his fellow professionals could not access NBA team facilities, trainers or staff. Luckily for a then-14 King and his schoolmates, Akron’s hometown hero James, on the cusp of winning his first ring with the Miami Heat, decided to return to his old school for his extended off-season training.
King admits he hadn’t even realised James had attended St. Vincent-St. Mary until he first visited the school himself and saw LeBron’s name up in the rafters of the gym. He adds that the man who many consider as up there with Michael Jordan as the greatest basketball player of all time, was “just a regular guy, believe it or not”.
“He was always playing with us. He wasn’t the type of guy to be on the court working out and tell us we couldn’t be on the court with him. He was open about that.
“If guys wanted to jump into drills with him he was fine with that. He played pick-up some times, he would jump into practice with us sometimes. In that case, he was never that type to be stand-offish because of who he was.
“He wanted us to feel comfortable around him, and that was very interesting , and kind of surprising from my end, to see a guy like that coming in and trying to be almost one of us. But then again he felt at home, being at St. Mary again. He felt that, and he wanted to relay that feeling to us as well.”
King said while he had the challenge of guarding James “a few times” in those pick-up games, the Cleveland Cavaliers great was “never the type to just score on us”, instead offering some coaching and words of advice to his young sparring partners.
“Oh yeah, we talked a lot. He was always telling me, ‘regardless of what people say, just be your own player. We’re two totally different players, even though you’re who you are coming in as a freshman just like I was. Just be who you are and everything else will take care of itself’.”
Born and raised in “cold” Cleveland, King, the son of two basketball players, tells BristolLive he knew from “a very young age” he had the potential to turn pro. His father Vincent Sr played overseas in Greece, Israel and Italy during his early childhood, while his mother Lowana also played in high school.
King, 26, said at first his parents wanted to make sure if basketball was really the career he wanted to pursue, rather than “just doing it because they played”. When they realised he was serious, they were soon “all in with support”. He describes his father as “a key part of my early basketball life”, coaching a lot of VJ’s teams up to his early teens.
King, who says he would have liked to have worked within the fashion industry if he wasn’t a basketball player, said he began really understanding the game growing up watching the NBA on television, with one player in particular inspiring him.
“The late, great Kobe Bryant, rest in peace, he was my all-time favourite player," he added. "I was too young to watch Michael Jordan. By the time I was able to watch and understand, he was retired by then. But I grew up watching Kobe.
“I just liked how he played, everything about him. I thought his game was so much different than the other guys who were playing at the time when I was watching. I tried to emulate my game off of his, sort of. His shooting ability, his mentality, his aggression, I just loved every part of his game.”
Following his exploits in high school, King went on to have a three-year career in college with Louisville in Kentucky. During this time he was selected to play in the All-American game, college ball’s equivalent to the NBA All-Star game.
In 2016 he suited up for team East alongside a host of future NBA stars, Sacramento Kings point guard De'Aaron Fox, Miami Heat centre Bam Adebayo, and Boston Celtics forward Jayson Tatum.
King was called up to represent team USA at the Under-17 FIBA World Championships in 2014, where he won a gold medal in Dubai alongside four-time All-Star Tatum.
“It was fun playing with those guys, to be in that type of atmosphere”, King remembers. “Competition was great. Probably the only competition we had was when we were playing each other.
“When we got to the competition there was no team that was close to us. We won back-to-back summers, we didn’t lose a game during that time. Just getting to know the guys, and coming up with a lot of the guys who are in the NBA now, it was a great experience.
“I don’t think there was one guy that we weren’t not cool with, I think we were all pretty tight-knit group, just because we spent so much time together.”
King left Louisville to enter the 2019 NBA Draft, a process he describes as “very tiring for the most part.” After a month of working out with teams across multiple cities, he ultimately went undrafted, before briefly signing with the New York Knicks.
He was later waived before joining the franchise’s G-League affiliate team the Westchester Knicks, where he played for two years, before again being released.
On why it didn’t work out for him at Madison Square Garden, King speculates it could have been down “to a lot of things”.
“They had other players in mind. They had drafted two players in my position during that time, so obviously they wanted to put more time and effort into the guys they actually picked in the draft. But I mean, it was still a good experience in that environment. You learn so much from the guys there. It was a pretty good situation in Westchester.”
King said he had already known before he got to New York that in professional sports “it’s hard to get there, it’s even harder to stay there.”
“It’s just more about the opportunity and being consistent with your work. You can get a spot anywhere and just be lucky enough to be on one of those teams and be there for a long period of time.”
Instead, the candid King says the toughest part of his career to date has been some of the mental aspects of the game, including having to deal with outside voices saying things about him in the media. What he has also found hard, he adds, has been avoiding comparing himself to others and “just focusing on my own journey as a player”.
“Early in my career, in my younger days I would do that often just naturally, but it can sometimes be something that you deal with.”
Like his father before him, King made the move to ply his trade in Europe. First stop - Luxembourg, where he signed for AB Contern of the country’s top tier Total League. After half a season there, King explains the team’s coach knew Bristol Flyers head coach Andreas Kapoulas, who after a couple of conversations told King he wanted him to come and pay for the club.
King admits he didn’t know anything about the British Basketball League (BBL) before he arrived on these shores last summer. He adds that while this is the first country he has played in where basketball wasn’t necessarily as popular as other countries, he has been “surprised” with the standard of the competition.
“It’s one of the few leagues that I have played in that from the top team to the bottom team, anybody can win any game, and that’s normal in a lot of leagues," King adds. "There’s not an easy game that we’ve played so far in my opinion, which is great, to have that competition, everybody’s fighting for this part of the season.”
On adjusting to life in Bristol, King says one of the first things he noticed was the food was “pretty good” and it didn’t take him long to find some regular places to eat, with local barbecue restaurant Low and Slow among his favourites.
“The city is actually really similar to where I was staying in Luxembourg, so it wasn’t really much of an adjustment. The hardest part was getting used to the driving and being on the right side of the car. It took me a few weeks, just driving in open parking lots and in the neighbourhood, before I really felt comfortable to drive in the city.”
While he admits it is also hard being so far away from his family, it’s something he has also had to get used to throughout his basketball career.
“It’s been like this my whole life, seeing them for a few months at a time and then being gone for seven of eight months out of the year. Going to camps, even before college I wasn't home too often, I was always travelling.
“I have a close-knit family. Pretty much all of them live in Ohio. I can always pick up the phone and just talk to my family. We haven't spoken in a while but they understand what it is and what comes with being a professional playing, especially outside of the States.”
It may have taken King a bit of time to get used to driving around Bristol, but on the court he has been enjoying life in the fast lane, averaging 18 points, six rebounds and two assists per game this season.
As of writing he is one of the top five points scorers in the BBL this season. He was named player of the month for January, becoming the first Bristol Flyers player to win the award since the club joined the league in 2014.
King has been a part of a hard-nosed, gritty Flyers team, known for going after it on the defensive end and for doing it by committee on offence. They have defied some pre-season predictions from some BBL analysts to find themselves second in the table.
With the regular season coming to an end, the club has already qualified for the post-season play-offs earlier than it has ever done before, while it is on track for its highest league table finish. It had its best ever start to a season after winning its opening four games, and earlier this year it went on a record streak of seven consecutive victories.
Despite their achievements so far, King insists the team could not afford to get complacent and must stay hungry and continue to work.
“The goal is to finish in those top two spots, and we have been there all season. Leicester are right behind us and they are putting a lot of pressure on us, but it’s great competition and when the play-offs start, we’ll see where we stand. Hopefully, the goal is to be in that championship final, no matter who it’s against.”
King said the buzz around the team’s success this season and its move in the coming years to a new 3,600-seater arena to be built next to Ashton Gate Stadium, would only help to boost basketball’s popularity in Bristol.
While he concedes it is hard for the game to compete with football’s “dominance”, he said he believes with the BBL growing and attracting new players every year, “the sky's the limit” as to how big the UK’s elite professional division can get.
As for his own future, King’s current contract with the Flyers is set to expire at the end of this season, but he insists he is trying to “stay in the moment, and finish out the season strong.”
“Of course I want to do a lot of things playing this game. I try not to think ahead, these things will take care of themselves. Just go in, work as hard as you can every day. For now I’m here, and I’m not really worried about what will happen in the rest of my career.”
“This game has taken me to so many places and it will continue to. There’s not one specific place I want to go more than the other. I just want to continue to play, and if I continue to do that, I will look back at the end of my career, I will have played in how ever many countries, and I will be happy with where I have been.”
Owing to the Flyers’ gruelling schedule of late, King says he hasn't had as much opportunity to explore Bristol as he did when he first arrived in the city. He has now attended his first ever rugby match, after he and his teammates went down to see the Bristol Bears play at Ashton Gate.
“Man, those guys are different types of athletes, hitting each other without pads. It's basically American football without the pads, which is crazy to think about. It’s awesome to see those great athletes in their sport, and experiencing that.”
LeBron James has revealed that during the 2011 NBA lockout season he was approached for try-outs with NFL teams, the Dallas Cowboys and Seattle Seahawks. Is King now tempted to train with the Bears, perhaps? “I’d say that’s unlikely!”, he responds.
