Warehouse worker destroys LeBron at H-O-R-S-E

Meet the guy who beat LeBron James at HORSE
David Kalb is an Internet superstar.
By MARCIA C. SMITH

LA HABRA The closest David Kalb ever came to making the NBA was starting – once – for the University of Akron basketball team because the top point guard had uniform gaffe.

While some athletes spout that they made the bigs long enough to have a cup of coffee, Kalb's career highlight lasted "long enough for the other guy to change his socks."

But now, after eight years, five cities, two colleges, two jobs and one entry into a lawnmower company's shooting contest, Kalb can kick off his Nike Air Jordans at his La Habra home, rub his bald dome and relish his latest, greatest hoops exploit.

ESPN has been calling. Radio interview requests have been filling his message mailbox. Agents from "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno" want to book Kalb, "The Trick Shot Guy Who Beat LeBron James."

"I'm really overwhelmed by the sudden celebrity," says Kalb, 26, a warehouse accounts manager for Faro Logistics Services. "This is the closest I'll ever come to being in the NBA."

James, the Cleveland Cavaliers All-Star forward, handpicked Kalb's video entry as Cub Cadet's Trick Shot Challenge winner. The grainy video features Kalb dribbling a basketball inside one of Faro's Los Angeles-area warehouses.

Wooden crates storing home furnishings line the shelves around him. Fluorescent bars light the ceiling that looms about four stories high. A forklift, driven by Kalb's older brother, Danny, 29, moves through the room, its cargo a basketball hoop raised about 30 feet off the cement.

For his first shot, Kalb bounds four feet off a platform and bounces the basketball high enough to drop through the towering rim. The net ripples. Swish!

For the second incredible shot, the forklift and hoop revolve in merry-go-round circles at the center of the warehouse floor. David Kalb shoots the ball high, sending the ball to ricochet off the cinderblock walls and --- "Oh yeah!" they yell – through the moving basket.

The YouTube fodder won Kalb last Wednesday's meeting and a game of H-O-R-S-E with King James. The reigning NBA scoring champion and 2008 Olympic gold medalist met up with Kalb at an outdoor court on Venice Beach.

"I'd never met an NBA player before," says Kalb, who grew up in the central Ohio town of Bucyrus, population 13,224. "But I had seen LeBron play when he was in high school."

The youngest son of an accountant and an elementary school librarian, Kalb ran track and played football and basketball at Wynford High. He walked on to the Akron basketball team, which opened its arena for the massive crowds that wanted to see James, then a high school sophomore, play for the city's St. Vincent-St. Mary High.

"LeBron was already outdrawing our college team," recalls Kalb.

Taking a timeout from basketball after his freshman season at Akron, Kalb went to Seattle in 2001 to attend stuntman school. He moved to Van Nuys, went to auditions and searched for stunt work. He landed one role – at San Diego's SeaWorld.

"For six weeks around Halloween, I played a surfer who gets attacked by a shark," says Kalb, laughing. "That was the best and easiest job I've ever had."

After the sharks, Kalb returned to Columbus, Ohio, and Division III Capital University. While there, he started two seasons at guard and majored in radio, TV and film.

A few of his Capital University teammates urged Kalb to follow them to Southern California. On July 4, 2007, Kalb settled in La Habra and joined the local 24 Hour Fitness, where he plays in pickup games three times a week.

His team at the La Mirada Recreation Center, The JV Squad, became the defending league champion. At the warehouse, Kalb took shootaround breaks on a hoop that his boss bought at a garage sale.

"I would get bored and start trying weird shots, trick shots, anything I could think of," says Kalb. "I never thought messing around would lead to LeBron James."

For more than a month, Kalb had prepared for his showcase. He had practiced his trick shots, spent $86 on sneakers for the occasion and, by the time the private car with tinted windows arrived last Wednesday morning, he had donned the Cub Cadet T-shirt that carried "Kalb" and "22 ½" on its back. (James wears No. 23 for the Cavaliers.)

Nobody shouted or started taking photographs when the 6-foot-1,195-pound Kalb arrived. But when James unfolded his 6-8, 250-pound body like a lawn chair and stepped out of a sleek Ford Excursion, passersby cheered and stopped to see what brought the superstar surfside.

James, wearing a snug, sleeveless white that revealed a small mountain range of arm muscles, shook the nervous hand of Kalb, who wore a T-shirt that draped his skinny frame like a bedsheet would a ghost-playing kid.

Their contest was child's play, H-O-R-S-E, the shooting game in which opponents take turns matching each other's shots and earning a letter for every miss.

James came out firing, giving Kalb an H-O to start.

Then it started. Kalb nailed shots from behind the backboard. He hit a left-handed free throw. He buried a banked 3-pointer and sunk a granny shot from the top of the key, firing the ball up like a football center. Between tricks, he did backflips.

"Best-of-three, right?" James begged, after he'd lost Game 1 to a guy the gallery called "The Warehouse Worker."

Sure. Kalb won Game 2 in seven shots. In Game 3, Kalb took on two letters before blistering James yet again.

At one point, Kalb stood about 10 feet from the hoop, tossed the ball high in the air, sprinted around the basket and returned to the court to catch the ball after a bounce and launch a fadeaway jumper. His went in; James' glanced off the back iron.

If basketball has any law of physics, it was broken.

James shook his head and smiled, reflecting amazement and, just maybe, a bit of unscripted frustration. Still, gracious in defeat, the pro baller shook Kalb's hand. Then he signed their game ball, Kalb's T-shirt and another jersey. "Thanks," said Kalb, beaming.

For one day, Kalb, "The Warehouse Worker" and rec league player from La Habra, went one-on-one with NBA royalty and usurped The King. He went back to work a day later.