An Akron couple has a million reasons to love LeBron James — 1.3 million reasons to be exact.
John and Angel Whorton were the first contestants on a sneak peek of the James-produced, prime-time game show The Wall Monday night on NBC and walked away with a cool $1.3 million.
The couple — John works for Key Bank and was a Kent State basketball standout, and Angel a Youngstown State graduate and special education teacher for Akron Public Schools — had to work together to correctly answer trivia questions before a giant wall that resembles a Plinko board from The Price is Right.
(James would certainly be familiar with Plinko: At shootaround Tuesday in Milwaukee, he said, “I watched The Price is Right a lot. My mother watched it all the time and we only had one TV so at the end of the day, you watched what your mother watched.”)
On The Wall, for correct answers a green ball is released and bounces its way to the bottom, where there are slots with dollar amounts ranging from a mere $1 to as much as $3 million.
As the game progresses, contestants can watch as the pot grows, with a maximum of $12 million. But for incorrect answers a red ball is dropped and contestants lose money depending on which slot the ball lands in.
Angel said it was tough keeping their outcome a secret until the episode aired Monday night. She said the most curious were their children John Ramon, 9, and Kara, 11.
The show, hosted by Chris Hardwick and produced by James’ SpringHill Entertainment, which he created with his St. Vincent-St. Mary fellow alum Maverick Carter, will return to NBC on Jan. 2. It’s the first game show for SpringHill.
“It was great,” James said Tuesday. “I remember from day one when it was pitched to us, and it was put on like a PowerPoint, and the wall was constructed of, like, a big ol’ board of paper … To see it come all the way to where it was last night, it was like seeing your kid go off to college. Seeing it from day one all the way to being put on television. So it was a great day for our group and hopefully we will continue to do great things.”
If you would like to watch Monday night’s show featuring the Akron couple, you can view it at www.nbc.com/the-wall?nbc=1.
Craig Webb can be reached at cwebb@thebeaconjournal.com or 330-996-3547. Beacon Journal sports columnist Marla Ridenour contributed to this report.