Advertisement

LeBron James is making a high school basketball series for YouTube

It's the latest big name attached to a YouTube Red show.

Sam Sharpe-USA Today Sports

YouTube has already lined up a few big names for original shows on its Red subscription service, and now that includes sports superstars. LeBron James is executive producing Best Shot, an eight-episode documentary covering a high school basketball team mentored by former NBA player Jay Williams. It'll follow the students as they both pursue their hoop dreams and grapple with life challenges. Michael John Warren (best known for his documentaries on Jay-Z and Nicki Minaj) is directing.

The series should be available on Red sometime in 2018.

While this probably won't be the documentary about LeBron James that some might hope for, it could be effective at reeling people in. Rival services like Amazon Prime Video and Netflix have lately used sports documentaries as a way to expand their audiences, and this might do the trick if shows about Katy Perry and Tinder won't scratch the itch. With that said, this is one show. YouTube may need to step up the pace when its competitors already have multiple shows either available or in the works.