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LeBron James says he was told he'd only grow up to be 6'3" and how that news tore him apart.

(AP)

CHICAGO - When LeBron James was 11, he went in for a routine sports physical and ended up receiving some mighty disturbing news.

He doesn't remember the name of the doctor. A die-hard Michael Jordan admirer and avid NBA fan was given a positive report. He was a healthy kid with no red flags and was approved to play the sport of his choice.

But James doesn't remember hearing any of that.

All he could recall is the doctor stepping into the room and predicting that James would grow to be around 6 feet, 3 inches. This news absolutely crushed him.

"When your idols are Michael Jordan and Penny Hardaway, you're like [expletive]," James said to cleveland.com in a one-on-one session. "You're looking on the back of basketball cards and it says M.J. 6-6, Penny Hardaway 6-71/2, Grant Hill 6-8, you're like, 'I'm only going to be 6-3? Golly. My dreams are shattered.' That's how it made me feel."

Not that 6-3 is anything to be ashamed of.

The average American male stands 5-10. However, James' disappointment was understandable. Instead of playing the same position as some of his idols, he would have to shift his focus to being purely a point guard if he truly had NBA aspirations.

On Saturday morning, the Cleveland Cavaliers arrived at United Center for shootaround in preparation for tonight's game against the Chicago Bulls. The six championship banners and Jordan's retired No. 23 banner floated over James' head as he tied his shoes before getting in a workout. Those are essentially his childhood memories hanging in the rafters.

The plays, the isolation moves Jordan would execute were immediately soaked into James' brain -- to be mimicked later on the blacktop. The prototypical wing was Jordan, and if you were a youngster who religiously followed Jordan's every move, you wanted "To be like Mike," too.

James was approximately 5'7" at age 11. His growth spurt was just about to take off. He reached six feet in junior high. By the end of his freshman year, he was 6-3.

"I thought I was all done," he said, referencing the doctor's prognosis 20 years ago. Then he admitted the truth.

"Nah, once I was that tall at that age, I felt pretty good about my chances."

He obviously wasn't done. James is 6-8 and weighs in at 250 pounds, give or take. The doctor's calculations were way off. James became the biggest, fastest-moving specimen to ever step foot on a basketball court.

But what if he wasn't blessed with those extra five inches? The league is in the midst of what we're calling "the point guard era." What type of player would James have been?

"I'll still be the same player, I'll just probably be shorter," James said to cleveland.com. "I'm not sure I'd still have that athleticism as far as how I jump, but as far as my intelligence, my basketball IQ, that wouldn't have changed at all."

Typically, the short players are the ones who can really get up there.

"I don't know if you jump higher if you're shorter or not. You do have guys like [Russell] Westbrook, who is not 6'3". He's like 6'4", 6'5"," James said in a kidding tone while laughing. "And obviously D-Rose in his heyday, boy he was jumping out of the gym. But I would still be a very dominant player in this league just because of my basketball IQ and my drive."

The moral of this story? The doctor isn't always right. If you desire to be an NBA wing player and the doctor says your ceiling is 6-3, there's always a chance they're wrong.

But if they're right, it might be a good time to perfect those ball-handling drills just in case.