CLEVELAND _ LeBron James' life has been turned into a musical _ and he loves it.
Executives at Dose, a digital media company, took the title song from the Broadway hit musical "Hamilton" and set it to James' life, from his high school days at St. Vincent-St. Mary to The Decision and his return to Cleveland. The nearly five-minute video was released Monday morning.
"It's great. It's unbelievable, actually," James said. "It was basically the whole journey, up until this point. Obviously they've done their homework and they were pretty much spot on. And the visuals were pretty cool, too."
Weston Green served as the executive producer of the project and George Wasgatt directed it. Both men are in their early 30s and previously worked at Bleacher Report _ which helped launch James' Uninterrupted video brand _ but there is no connection between the Dose executives and James.
Wasgatt is simply a huge basketball fan _ a Celtics fan to be precise _ and he has been a fan of James for years.
"He has the most cinematic basketball life you could ask for," Wasgatt said. "Even the small twists and turns, going to Miami and losing to the Mavericks. Everyone wanted that to happen because he was the villain."
While the music was taken from Hamilton, Danny Tieger wrote the lyrics to fit James' life. The trio of creators worked with a Los Angeles-based casting company to carefully select the cast. The lead role of James was played by Jaquez, a Broadway performer and dancer.
Actors were also cast as Kyrie Irving, Dwyane Wade, Chris Bosh and Steph Curry, with signature touches throughout. Curry's character, William Basham, got a haircut to look just like Curry and even wore Curry's shoes during filming while chewing on a mouth guard that he throws at the end. James' character wears the proper Nike LeBron shoes from the era they're depicting.
James hasn't seen Hamilton yet, although he wants to. For now, this will have to do.
"All the different characters and different uniforms and different jerseys and things of that nature. I've done something right up until this point with my career to see someone be able to take the time out of their days to do something like that. It's pretty cool," James said. "I was ... in awe just watching it. It's pretty cool."
Dose is a startup company with a video department that has only been around a couple of months. Both Green and Wasgatt said the goal is to show how the company's editorial and analytics can come together to create videos people love.
"The end game is for as many people to see it. We think it's a fun and entertaining video," Green said. "If a lot of people can pull out their phone and show their family after they eat a meal (at Thanksgiving), we'd love that."
