Kruse, again: MIAMI — Downstairs was a rented Ford Escape with a used hotel key card on the console. Up in his 23rd-floor apartment were a few pieces of furniture and an unhung shower curtain on the edge of the tub. The white-tile floor was a little too white. The brand-new smell smelled a little too new. This, Brian Windhorst said, was going to take some getting used to.
He's in South Florida because of a man he has been following around the country for most of the past 12 years.
Brian covered LeBron James in high school in Akron, Ohio, for the Akron Beacon Journal. He covered LeBron and the Cleveland Cavaliers in the NBA for the Beacon Journal and then the Cleveland Plain Dealer. Now Brian's down here covering LeBron and the Miami Heat for ESPN.com.
Brian grew up in a stable, middle-class home, and LeBron grew up the only child of a single mother in subsidized housing. Brian is husky and white, and LeBron is tall and black. LeBron turns 26 in December, and Brian turns 33 in January.
But they were born and raised on the west side of Akron. They went to the same high school. Brian's mother, a health teacher, taught both boys sex ed. Up until this fall, neither one of them had ever lived outside of Ohio. Their families still live there.
"We know a lot of the same people," Brian said in his apartment earlier this month, "and we had some of the same friends."
Brian moved to move up professionally. So far, though, he feels not only disconnected from his home but also increasingly distant from LeBron.
The view out his floor-to-ceiling windows was of docked yachts, a sleek rooftop pool and the brilliant blue of Biscayne Bay.
"We're not in Cleveland anymore," Brian said.
He paused before finishing the thought.
"I wish we were."
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