OAKLAND, Calif. – Marc Olivier, coach of the Oakland Soldiers AAU team, had a 15-year-old basketball prodigy named LeBron James in the back seat of his car one day in July 2000. Olivier had picked up James and his buddy from San Francisco International Airport and was struggling to get the boys to talk.

"I didn't know him and he didn't know me. He was quiet," Olivier said. "I had to kind of break the ice. When we got in the car we already were in San Francisco. So I said, 'Have you guys ever heard of the most crooked street in the world? …Y'all want to go?' "

Olivier took the boys to Lombard Street, and "that kind of broke the ice."

View photos LeBron James played for the AAU Oakland Soldiers when he was in high school. (Special to Yahoo Sports) More

While James was a local basketball star in Akron, Ohio, at that time, he was largely unknown to the rest of the nation when he came to play in a tournament for the AAU Oakland Soldiers in 2000. The Soldiers were founded in 1990 in the Oakland suburb of Richmond. Twenty-five years later, it has now grown into an AAU powerhouse with alumni that include James, Chauncey Billups, Brandon Jennings, Leon Powe, Aaron Gordon, Chuck Hayes, Jabari Brown, Kendrick Perkins and Stanley Johnson.

Fifteen years after first playing for the Soldiers, James returns to the Bay Area to lead his Cleveland Cavaliers against the Golden State Warriors in the NBA Finals.

"It's amazing because that part of his life he never talks about publicly," Olivier said. "But I thought we had some good times and we still talk about it."

Oakland native Chris Dennis was living in Akron in 1998 when he went to see his brother play in a youth basketball league with other middle school kids. He noticed that one of his brother's teammates was not only bigger, but much more advanced skill-wise. He also already possessed a strong basketball IQ. That kid was James, and Dennis called Soldiers co-founder Calvin Andrews to tell him he had just found a star-in-the-making.

"I told him that I saw a kid that will be better than Jason Kidd," Dennis said. "He just blew me off, but I didn't give up on it."

Not giving up, Dennis brought a VHS video highlight tape of James after his freshman year in high school for Andrews and Olivier to see in the Adidas suite during the 2000 NCAA Final Four in Indianapolis. While the tape was being played, Andrews said Adidas' top basketball executive, Sonny Vaccaro, started watching.

"Sonny walks by and asks what we were watching," Andrews said. "Once we told Sonny it was a freshman from Akron, Ohio, he walked away very uninterested. The kid looked good, but no one was overly impressed."

Dennis made it his personal mission to try to get James a bigger spotlight – and he wouldn't give up on seeing him in a Soldiers uniform.

"I saw a ranking of the top freshman of his class and LeBron wasn't in it," Dennis said. "I was like, 'I got to help change that for the kid.' He deserves much better than that."

Dennis also talked to James' then-high school coach Keith Dambrot about playing for the Soldiers. While Andrews eventually started to warm to the idea, he worried that the local kids playing might have animosity toward an outsider like James. The Soldiers also didn't have the budget to fly him in.

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After being pushed further by Dennis, Andrews said Dambrot, then-University of California-Berkeley men's basketball coach Ben Braun, Andrews and Olivier eventually talked about what good could come from James playing for the Soldiers. Andrews agreed to make a Soldiers roster spot available for James at the Elite 8 Tournament in late July 2000, but would not pay for his travel. After Olivier agreed to host James and his high school teammate and friend Dru Joyce Jr., the trip was set.

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