In her first interview, the basketball icon's high school sweetheart discusses life off the court and the move to Miami.Savannah Brinson, long-time girlfriend of basketball phenom LeBron James, has just finished her first major photo shoot. For this low-key girl from Akron, Ohio, it was quite the heady experience. James is used to this sort of attention, she says. She, on the other hand, is decidedly not. "I've always been in the background," she says, having changed back into her white track suit with bedazzled hearts for a bowl of spaghetti at Manhattan's Serafina restaurant. As she slowly twirls her pasta, she looks both wide-eyed and incredulous. "Now that magazines and the paparazzi are taking pictures of me, it's kind of weird. I never thought it would get to this magnitude, but clearly I was mistaken," she says.
Brinson, 24, had better get used to the spotlight, because the glare will only get brighter now that James has left Cleveland, his home for the past seven years, for the sunny climes of Florida. After months of serious flirtation with a handful of teams—the New Jersey Nets, New York Knicks, Los Angeles Clippers, and Chicago Bulls—James, 25, who became a free agent this July, ultimately chose the Miami Heat. Fans outside of the Sunshine State were left heartbroken and seething. He and Brinson were roundly booed in New York City recently while walking into the wedding of Denver Nuggets star Carmelo Anthony and former MTV VJ La La Vazquez. At home, a few Cleveland Cavaliers diehards set fire to the player's No. 23 jersey. Not exactly the cordial send-off they were expecting. "You have fans and you think they're going to roll with you no matter what, and then they burn your jersey? It's unfair," Brinson says. "But they did it. It's over."
