Firestorm of fame gathers round the new Michael Jordan

Consider, for a moment, your idea of the average American high school kid - hanging out by the lockers; experimenting a little behind the bike sheds; doing a Saturday job to pay for those over-priced sneakers; worrying about dates and grades . . .

Maybe such a kid might have a mock-up Sports Illustrated cover on his bedroom wall with a picture of himself, saying "The next Michael Jordan".

Then consider the case of LeBron James, an 18-year-old pupil at St Vincent-St Mary High School in Akron, Ohio. He used to have one of those mock-ups on his bedroom wall - until he really did make the cover of Sports Illustrated, and even Michael Jordan started to say he was the next Michael Jordan.

In June James will be leaving school, almost certainly to become the No1 pick in next season's National Basketball Association draft. He has just about stopped growing, at 6ft 8in. He is already the hottest young property in American sport, and is about to become a multimillionaire. But in the meantime he is still a schoolboy, and there are people trying to treat him like one.

James has just been banned from high school sport forever for violating the amateurism rules of the Ohio High School Athletic Association by accepting a gift worth over $100 ($60) from a non-relative, to wit two jerseys given him by a shopkeeper.

James said he thought they were a reward for his good grades in class.

Unless he successfully appeals, his school will play the rest of the season without him, which is somewhat inconvenient - because the school has cashed in on his celebrity by switching its home games from its own gym to the arena at the University of Akron, has arranged a national fixture list and is copping the cash for them being shown on pay-per-view TV.

When St V-St M ("the Fighting Irish") played at the university on Sunday, the crowd spent more time watching James, sitting on the sidelines in a natty yellow suit with a lot of gold round his neck, than it did watching the actual game.

James's temporary nemesis is one Clair Muscaro (a bloke), the Ohio association commissioner, who had been forced to let him off on a previous charge of being given a $50,000 four-wheel-drive car.

Unfortunately for Muscaro, the evidence was that the car was an 18th-birthday present from James's mother. Second time around, the commissioner was determined to impose his law. "LeBron James would be treated just like the other 300,000 high school athletes in Ohio," Muscaro insisted. "Skill level has nothing to do with it."

Oh, give over, you silly old jobsworth. When James arrived at Los Angeles airport the other week he was met, according to the Sports Illustrated account, "by a 30ft-long white Cadillac Escalade complete with satellite TV, two wet bars, frosted windows, an eight-speaker stereo and room for 16 passengers. Wearing an And1 flannel jacket, vintage lo-top Nikes and an Adidas backpack - a tease for the shoe companies vying to drop $25m in his lap - the most hyped high schooler ever piled into the land yacht with his personal security guard, his mother and his wide-eyed team-mates." "Just another day at the circus," commented the team's assistant coach.

Amateur status for the likes of James, who has agents hovering round him like wasps round a jampot, is farcical, as it is, less obviously, for hundreds of other gifted young American sportsmen. There are clearly people in Ohio who think that James is arrogant and greedy and uppity and needs some ritual humiliation.

And they reckon his mother, Gloria, who appears to go round acting like a lottery-winner, is worse. But let's be Guardianish about this: it is an old inner-city story. Gloria was 16 when she gave birth to LeBron; he never knew his father; her boyfriend got jailed for cocaine-dealing.

"I saw drugs, guns, killings; it was crazy," said LeBron. "But my mom kept food in my mouth and clothes on my back." Eventually, she let him live for a while with his basketball coach, Eddie Walker, which he said changed his life. He became a national star at 13.

And he really did start getting good grades. You would think at this stage the people in Ohio would be doing their utmost to give him sympathetic help and support so that he could cope with the firestorm of fame. He seems to be surrounded by grown-ups who are either grasping or vindictive.