Hip-hop magnate and Nets minority owner Jay-Z has said publicly that he's not going to pressure his friend LeBron James to join his team, but who says he can't seduce him a little?
On Friday, less than a week before a handful of NBA ball clubs travel to Ohio to woo the soon-to-be free agent into one of their jerseys, King James spent some quality time with Jay-Z in New York, and got a taste of the super-swank life that could be his if he made the Nets his team.
James made a surprise appearance at the 40th birthday party for branding guru Steve Stoute that took place Friday night at a magnificent seventh-floor roof garden at Rockefeller Center. (In addition to being a close friend of Jay-Z's, Stoute is the founder of Translations, the marketing firm that has put James together with McDonald's and other deep-pocketed corporate sponsors.)
At the party, LeBron - who's no stranger to VIP treatment - got the full Jay-Z Family experience: he arrived with the rapper and his wife Beyoncé. Mary J. Blige was also on hand. He ate a meal catered by Chef April Bloomfield and the staff of the Spotted Pig, which counts Jay-Z as an investor. (Dishes included beef and Stilton pie and Arctic char; and at 2 a.m., breakfast with something called "steak and egg biscuits" was served.) And helping the crowd work off all those calories was Beyoncé's sister Solange Knowles, who played deejay for the evening.
According to another well-placed source, Jay-Z had plans to hang with LeBron on Thursday as well. The source says that Jay-Z had planned to make a midnight appearance with James at the NBA Draft Party that took place Thursday night at his 40/40 Club on W. 25th St. But, after spending the day working on his greatest hits CD, the rapper was "tired and hungry" and left James to his own devices, and the NBA star landed at Avenue with Blige.
Jay-Z's night out with James won't sit well with the New York Knicks. Reports say the Knicks scrapped plans to fete James with a pull-out-all-the-stops dinner in the city when they learned that James wouldn't be wooed in NYC. The NBA star's manager Maverick Carter announced that ball clubs would have to make the pilgrimage to Ohio to pitch James.
And it looks like Jay-Z has that angle covered as well. On Thursday, July 1, the day that James officially becomes a free agent, the rapper reportedly will travel to Akron, Ohio, with Nets owner Mikhail Prokhorov, where the Nets are first in line to make an official play for the forward. But with rumors floating that James is taking a good hard look at the Chicago Bulls, let's hope Jay-Z was putting the full-court press on his friend this past weekend.
With Carson Griffith
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/gossip/2010/06/28/2010-06-28_lebron_james.html#ixzz0sD0og9K3
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