"My mom could have lost a son." Inside Mike James' Misunderstood 2024-25 Season Away from the Floor

Serena Schley and her sister were in the midst of the nearly nine hour drive from Orlando, Florida, to North Carolina State for the team’s 2024-25 introductory event when her son Mike James called.

Schley knew the tone in James’ voice all too well at that point from his three demoralizing seasons at Louisville, one of which he missed with a torn achilles and the other two his team had a combined record of 12-52 in. As a result, it didn’t take her long to figure it out. James was distraught.

Something was terribly wrong.

“They’re taking me to surgery,” James–a now healthy Vanderbilt guard–told Schley.

“Surgery for what?” she replied.

“There’s nothing wrong with me,” James said, “My knee is just swollen.”

Her son didn’t know it at that point, but Schley knew deep down that something was up. Schley had experienced knee swelling before as a result of her arthritis and was tipped off by the doctor’s note about the swelling in her son’s knee.

James’ surgery was scheduled for 3:00 that day and Schley booked it up to Raleigh in order to make it up by 3:30, but James still wasn’t convinced in regards to the severity of his injury.

“Mom, nothing is wrong,” James said. “I didn’t injure myself.”

“Something must be wrong,” Schley said.

Then, James finally gave in to the thoughts that he was pushing off as he anticipated the surgery that he would have to undergo later that afternoon.

It was almost as if with a little prodding, the then NC State guard finally allowed himself to realize the magnitude of the afternoon he was having. As much as he didn’t want to, he realized that his “nothing is wrong” remark towards his mom was more optimistic than factual.

“They took fluid out of my knee,” James told his mom. “They said it was very cloudy, so they tested it and now they’re having to do surgery and I don’t know how long I’m gonna be out.”

The initial prognosis from the doctors after the surgery was that James would only be out 2-to-4 weeks as long as no further complications occurred. That would set him up to be a factor for NC State the entire season and would allow him to potentially influence a winning season for the first time in his career. It was a diagnosis worth celebrating.

That timeline always had a cloud hanging over it, though.

Prior to the conclusion of James’ surgery, Schley walked in and asked an NC State assistant coach if the doctors knew whether her son had a MRSA infection–an infection that is caused by a type of staph bacteria that's become resistant to many of the antibiotics used to treat ordinary staph infections. The coach said that the group of surgeons that examined the fluid found that James had an infection in his knee, but that they wouldn’t know whether he had a MRSA infection until the fluid was out of his knee.

Schley was tipped off to the possibility of MRSA being in the picture for James when he told her that his shoulder had been bothering him and that the pain had moved down to his knee “for no reason.”

Turns out Schley was on to something.

The diagnosis on James’ knee troubles; MRSA. The doctors caught James’ infection early and prevented him from having life-altering effects from the troubles, but couldn’t sugarcoat how serious the infection needed to be taken.

“My heart broke,” Schley told Vandy on SI. “MRSA is detrimental and he could’ve lost his leg. That calmed [James] down because he felt [before] like he was having surgery for no reason. The surgeon knew what he was doing and he was really, really worried. When he talked to me he told me ‘I’ve talked to several other colleagues and they think that we should get this going, clean the area and put in some antibiotics to make sure the infection doesn’t spread.’”

As a result of the diagnosis, James’ season at NC State was over. If it wasn’t as a result of his initial diagnosis, it certainly was after his knee swelled up two weeks and forced him to go in for surgery again two weeks after the initial operation on his knee.

James had to wear an IV for multiple weeks. He had to stay on medication beyond that time period. All of a sudden, he was stripped of the game he loved and was forced to endure a mental battle along with his physical one.

“Mom,” James said in the early stages of his rehab process while he tried to come to grips with the situation he was in. “Do you think God is punishing me?”

“That whole thing was a hard situation for me to get through,” James–who was a double figure scorer in each of his seasons at Louisville–told Vandy on SI. “It was frustrating because I didn't know where it came from. I didn't know how it popped up. It kinda just came out of nowhere right before the season. It was a hard thing for me to deal with.”

Instead of being a go-to guy, James had to sit and watch while his team put together a 12-19 season that ultimately resulted in NC State head coach Kevin Keatts’ firing just a year after he led the program to a Final Four.

Instead of filling the scoring hole within a team that didn’t have a player average more than 12 points per game, James was subjected to sitting on the end of the bench in street clothes while his teammates went on an eight-game losing streak in the middle of ACC play and didn’t make the ACC Tournament.

“I feel like I could help my team if I was out there,” James said. “I feel like our season could have been a little different because I feel like I would have been a key piece to the NC State team, so it was frustrating not being able to get out there with those guys and help them.”

“It was hard for me to go to those games at Louisville, but I still went some, but I couldn’t do it at North Carolina State,” Schley added. “He says ‘the whole year you only came up twice, mom’ I said ‘Michael, I couldn’t just sit there and watch you sit on the sideline again. I couldn’t’ It was too heartbreaking for me.”

No matter what James did over on the bench, he couldn’t change the results on the floor in front of him. A trip to Raleigh for Schley would’ve included a few hellos with her son and a short-lived period of conversation, but never a look at her son on the floor. Outside of a few practice clips from the preseason, nobody ever saw what Keatts’ team would’ve looked like with James running the show for it.

The longer James was out of the lineup, the more the vagueness surrounding his absence started to loom.

The full context of James’ injury and why it held him out for so long was intentionally held from the public Despite comments from Keatts indicating that James would be out on the floor if he could, there was still a sect of the NC State fan base that was saying “bad” things to him online.

James had done the injury process before in his freshman season at Louisville, but he had never done it like he did in 2024-25. His first injury-riddled season saw him receive full support from the Louisville fan base. This time was different.

Certain members of NC State’s fanbase didn’t understand why James wasn’t playing as a result of a lack of information surrounding his absence. Some believed he should have been playing based off of the initial 2-to-4 week timeline that was publicised and wasn’t publicly updated when circumstances became more severe. Most notably, some viewed James’ year in Raleigh as a money grab in which he used the program.

Those around James vehemently disagreed with the criticism surrounding him.

“I wanted to so badly get on there and say ‘if you only knew what he was going through, you wouldn’t say these things because I could’ve lost my son,’” Schley said. “They talked about him bad, they said that he stole from them, a whole bunch of bad things about him. That’s not my son. My son loves basketball. He’s been playing basketball since he was five years old. Michael gets up at 4:00 in the morning when he’s here to go train.”

“My son is no thief,” she added. “My son would not take something that wasn’t given to him. If he could’ve gotten on the court, trust me; he would’ve gotten on the court and played. I believe in my heart that if he had, he would’ve made a difference. But, he couldn’t.”

Who knows how many wins James working his way back into the lineup would’ve added to NC State’s total or how it would’ve impacted Keatts’ eventual firing. James tried not to think in those terms, though. Instead, he tried to come to terms with the reality that he “didn’t feel comfortable” getting back on the court in game action at that point and aimed to do everything he could to prepare himself for when that moment came.

The 6-foot-5 guard didn’t know exactly what his future held, but he knew that if he consistently showed up and did what he had to then doors would be opened for him moving forward.

If James hadn’t done that, then Vanderbilt’s expensive background checks would’ve led them elsewhere when evaluating potential options on the wing. It would’ve been that way if he was late for appointments. If he didn’t “embrace” the weight room, it would’ve been that way. If he didn’t do any of those things, he wouldn’t be with Vanderbilt. He is, though.

“We got glowing reviews about how Mike handled that process,” Vanderbilt assistant coach Rick Ray told Vandy on SI. “When you start talking about doing your due diligence and making sure, that also involves your athletic trainer and it involves your strength coach.”

Because of James’ businesslike approach to his rehab and his previous body of work at Louisville, he’s got a chance to be an impact player at Vanderbilt on a team with NCAA Tournament aspirations. So far, so good on that front.

“Mike’s probably been the biggest surprise for us,” Vanderbilt coach Mark Byington told Vandy on SI in a late June interview. “We’ve only been on campus for a couple of weeks, but he’s been really impressive. His body looks good. He’s healthy. He gives us a guy that we can kind of play at that two spot if we want to.”

James chose Vanderbilt partly because he’s yet to experience the NCAA Tournament and approaches each day with that goal in mind. When he takes the floor in Vanderbilt pickup games and runs around with the smile that Schley says he appeared to lose in long spurts throughout his first four college seasons, it’s even sweeter because of what he went through throughout the last calendar year.

“It was a hard situation for me because I knew I didn't tear anything,” James said. “I didn't have a meniscus tear. I didn't have an ACL tear. It was like one of the more random things that ever happened to me in my life. It had me questioning myself in a lot of things, like ‘why me’ and stuff, but I eventually came back and got healthy after the season and I decided to redshirt and get my year back.”

In the year that he got back as a result of his nearly life-altering injury–that his mom believes God protected him from–James isn’t taking anything for granted, NCAA Tournament or not.

James isn’t only thinking about the end goal like he may have a few seasons ago. He’s thinking about what was almost stripped away from him and making the most of it. He’s thinking about walking. He’s thinking about conversations with his parents. He’s thinking about the opportunities that he still has the chance to make the most of.

“With that type of infection, a lot of people can lose their lives,” James said. “I Had to have another mindset about it, like basketball is just a game I'm just blessed to have be able to still be breathing and still have my life with me. My mom could have lost a son. My dad could have lost a son. My friends could have lost their friend. A lot of people could have lost somebody that they love. I just feel blessed that I have this opportunity to be back with my team and be fully healthy and ready to go.”