Before 16 of their children stalked and swaggered across John Wooden’s floor Saturday night, officials at St. Vincent-St. Mary high school of Akron, Ohio, handed out its mission statement.

“In the spirit of the Gospel, we are committed to educate … ” it began.

The declaration continued for eight lines, filled with words like “enlightening” and “developing” and “inspiring.”

On a strange, ominous night in Southern California basketball, however, the statement was incomplete.

It was also St. Vincent-St. Mary’s mission to take $15,000 and demand first-class airfare and accept limousine service to play a basketball game here.

It was their mission to ride the untucked, flopping shirttails of phenom LeBron James into a Hollywood night against Santa Ana’s Mater Dei High, complete with $25 tickets and $10 programs and expectations that filled Pauley Pavilion to its rafters.

It was mission incomprehensible.

This was not a high school basketball game. It was a squeaking, seamy version of American Idol.

The attraction was James, the 6-foot-8 forward who may be the best young basketball player since Michael Jordan, and certainly will be the No. 1 pick in this year’s NBA draft.

The rest of the kids were props.

So, too, were the ideals of extra-curricular activities in education.

“This is not a high school basketball game as I understand high school basketball games,” said Tim Ochsenshirt, the father of St. Vincent-St. Mary freshman forward Matt Ochsenshirt.

It was all about James, who was all about himself, throwing up mad jumpers and silly bombs and glaring at the officials and walking alone to his bench.

It was all about watching only James, with fans cheering or booing his every move, mostly booing as he showed only brief flashes of brilliance in his team’s 64-58 victory. He threw an amazing between-the-legs pass on a layup, but did little else that would separate him from any other high school kid.

“They come to see a show,” said James afterward, shrugging off an eight-for-24 performance with nine misses in nine three-point attempts. “I did enough.”

Contrary to most of the hand-wringing being done about perhaps the most hyped young sports star ever, it is not James who is being exploited here.

It is everyone, and everything, else.

James has a security director and 10-person entourage.

His teammates, left unprotected by a school unafraid to stick its hand out, have no protection from a skewered view of reality that will come to a crashing end in a couple months.

James is different from tennis, gymnastic and swimming prodigies in that, this is not a personal endeavor such as those we see every few years at the Olympics.

He is part of a team. This team is part of a school. That school is part of a community.

And when James defies school rules against earrings by wearing two studs to the postgame news conference, it matters.

“Of course we worry about this, but we think we’ve done everything we can,” said Patty Burdon, the school’s public relations director. “This is a once-in-a-lifetime thing. It could only happen in America.”