He went viral for playing defense against LeBron James in a pro-am game. But Dion Wright says he was never scared

By Ben Morse, CNN

Updated 0929 GMT (1729 HKT) August 16, 2022

Dion Wright scores during the Ukrainian Basketball SuperLeague game between BC Cherkaski Mavpy and BC Zaporizhzhia in southeastern Ukraine in January 2021.

(CNN)Standing room only, fans lined around the block and social media coverage like never before, all there to see one man: a four-time NBA champion and four-time NBA Most Valuable Player.

LeBron James is a living, breathing ticket salesman without even trying. So when he turned up to play at the Drew League — an annual summer pro-am league in California — in July for the first time since 2011, people turned out in droves. Appearing alongside five-time All-Star DeMar DeRozan for the MMV Cheaters, James put up 42 points, 16 rebounds and four steals as the Cheaters beat the Black Pearl Elite 104-102. However, when clips of James' surprise appearance took to social media, it was the player guarding him who caught the headlines. Read MoreNearly every person on the planet would have struggled to defend one of the greatest to ever play the sport. So when Dion Wright checked Twitter afterwards to see his face plastered all over it, he felt mixed emotions. On one hand, it was a culmination of a promise to his friends. «I told my friends, I like to speak things into existence, I told them I was going to go viral one day,» Wright told CNN Sport. «I didn't know how but I told him that, though, and they were just like: 'Dion, you were absolutely right. You told us that you were going to go viral one day.'»On the other hand though, the framing of the coverage he was getting annoyed him. Accompanying many of the videos of James displaying his elite offensive repertoire were supposedly humorous comments such as, «You can