There’s no shortage of material for a biographer to chronicle the current Los Angeles Laker, and Jeff Benedict’s comprehensive new LeBron does a masterful job of shaping that material into a cohesive and propulsive whole.

Benedict didn’t interview James directly for the book, but that fact drives home one of the book’s main themes — James built his empire by surrounding himself with an inner circle of close friends, all of whom he met before adulthood.

James did not speak to him either, but Benedict is good at reproducing his thoughts and even some of the scenes of his life from a composite of James’s published interviews and extensive interviews with the other people involved. The result is a skilfully confected and readable book that does very well with James’s childhood and loses its way the closer we get to his present-day self.

At over 500 pages, LeBron is an appropriately epic portrait.

Benedict describes this path in (overly) deep detail—James doesn’t make his NBA debut till nearly halfway through the book. But from there, the narrative is a well-paced account of James’ on-court ambitions and struggles with how to wield his celebrity.