A Mt. Edgecumbe High School student tried on his new basketball shoes in the gym Tuesday – a pair of Nikes originally intended for NBA legend LeBron James.

The student was Rashawn Stone, a freshman who already plays on the Braves' varsity basketball team. In addition to their shared affinity for basketball, Stone and the NBA star have something else in common: feet that fit a size 16 shoe.

Stone's new shoes are a donation from a Portland nonprofit. They ended up on Rashawn's feet in large part because his feet are big enough to fit the gargantuan footwear designed for a basketball player widely recognized as one of the greatest of all time and nicknamed "King James."

Rashawn Stone, from the arctic community of Anuktuvuk Pass, found out only Monday that he was getting the Nike LeBron XVII basketball sneakers.

Though he's fairly new to basketball and was a football player previously, Stone said he enjoys the sport and wants to play basketball during his entire time at Mt. Edgecumbe High.

“Basketball means a lot to me. I started last year playing basketball... Last year I really got into it. I mean, it's a really fun sport. I loved it. I want to do all four years of it,” Stone told the Sentinel as he received the shoes from Mt. Edgecumbe activities principal Andrew Friske.

When Friske received a message from Rachel Moreno, a Sitkan who now lives in Portland and works with the Native American Youth and Family Center, asking if there was a Mt. Edgecumbe student who could wear the special Nikes, he told her he did.

“I said, ‘Yes, I know one student, one size 16 shoes,’” Friske said.

Nike made LeBron six pairs of these shoes in white, and six more in black, during the pandemic. In that era, NBA teams were competing in a bubble in Florida to prevent coronavirus transmission. But James never received this white pair, so the Lakers returned the shoes to Nike and the company donated them to NAYA, Rachel Moreno told the Sentinel by phone.

“He never wore them, and so they were sent back to Nike, and Nike donated them to the Native American Youth and Family Center, where I work,” she recounted. “They had one pair left and asked me when I got here in February if I knew anybody who might possibly fit that size. I recalled Andrew Friske telling me about the students. So I contacted Andrew, and he said, ‘Absolutely!’”

NAYA does work in Portland that Moreno compared to the Central Council of Tlingit and Haida Indians of Alaska or Sitka Tribe of Alaska, with projects ranging from housing and youth education to college support and community gardening.

Stone learned about the shoes by text from Friske, Tuesday evening.

“I just went to his office, we had a little chat and he told me about the LeBron James' shoes – it's pretty crazy. I mean, I didn't know, it was so random. It's pretty crazy, though. Pretty excited about the shoes,” Stone said.

Friske was glad Moreno thought of MEHS when finding a recipient for the colossal basketball shoes designed for LeBron, a 6’ 9” Olympic champion and current Lakers forward.

“I think it's pretty special to have a pair of shoes that were designed specifically for LeBron James and for someone all the way down in Oregon to think of Mt. Edgecumbe High School,” Friske said. “Then take the time to get them and send them up and deliver them to one of our students.”

The shoes fit Rashawn Stone’s feet correctly when he tried them on in the Mt. Edgecumbe gym Tuesday.

Stone is a Lakers fan, and also follows the Miami Heat. He'd like to play collegiate basketball if possible.

“My goal in mind is to play college basketball, to get better,” he said.

He's enjoyed his time in Sitka so far, a town much larger than his home in Anaktuvuk Pass, a village of only a few hundred off the road system. He is both Inupiaq and Black; his parents met when his father was stationed in Alaska with the U.S. Army, Stone said. His mother attended Mt. Edgecumbe High years ago, he added.

Rachel Moreno likewise has a longstanding MEHS connection.

“I worked at Edgecumbe intermittently from 1990 until January, and so I probably, most likely might have had his mother as a student in the times that I was there,” Moreno said “…Those kids are always in my heart, and anything I can still do for them, I keep my eyes and ears open. I thought this was just a really cool thing.”