Prompt Images
Want to play a game? The last two weeks of the Olympics are the ideal setting for what I like to call “the simpleton LeBron James sports Mad Libs.” You know the rules. Take the following sentence and fill in the blanks:
“If you gave LeBron James __________ (haphazardly chosen set of time) he could be the best __________ (sport you’re watching) player in the world.”
Enough.
LeBron would not make a world class goalkeeper or striker for the U.S. Men’s National Team, nor a champion Greco-Roman wrestler. He wouldn’t be unblockable in volleyball competition or be able to kill it on the rugby pitch.
Want to know why?
Every single one of those positions requires an ungodly amount of specific skill and experience that is entirely different from what LeBron displays on the hardwood. Yes, we are all witnesses to his sheer athleticism and size, but that’s not enough. Olympic athletes have trained and specialized for years to be in peak form for the greatest competition.
So, to suggest that LeBron could just waltz in and reign supreme is just bullshit and boring and stupid.
The latest contestant in this game is U.S. National Handball coach Javier Garcia-Cuesta. What a buffoon. As handball was thrust back into Americans’ lives, Garcia-Cuesta told the Washington Post that LeBron James could be the best handball player in the world, if given just six months to learn the game.
First, what a slap in the face to the current players on today’s U.S. team. Second, I’d hope that the coach of the U.S. National Handball team would be able to see and understand the nuance of the game to which he devoted his career. Maybe I would give Garcia-Cuesta a tiny bit more credence if he had coached a team that had even qualified for any of the last five Summer Olympics.
So, how exactly is LeBron James going to turn the team’s chances around?
While basketball has many similarities to handball, the details are worlds apart. Handball has the same dribbling and passing, as well as the ability to legally travel three steps, which lends favorably to LeBron’s talents, but you can’t simply whitewash over the rest of the rules, the speed, and the footwork.
Also, let’s just put it out there. If indeed, someone like LeBron could become an Olympic handballer in six months, then handball is not a sport worthy of being in the Olympics. Sure, when handball reappears every four years it lets us reminisce back to high school gym class like a bunch of yuppie Uncle Ricos.
In the same way you couldn’t compete in trampoline just because you can do a double flip in your neighbor’s backyard, LeBron isn’t just a mythical animagus handball god. Handball requires vertical hangtime and arm strength, as it does finesse and contortion. Even if LeBron has all of those gifts, it would take years to figure out how to juggle them and when each is necessary.
But the Olympics are billed as a platform for the best athletes in the world, so why feature events with such communicable talents?
Current NFL player Nate Ebner competed for the USA Rugby team in Rio last week, but Ebner grew up playing rugby and only started playing football in college. Former NFL player, Jahvid Best also competed in Rio, running the 100-meter for St Lucia. Best, a lightning quick running back who had his football career curtailed by concussions, finished 54th out of 69 sprinters. That’s not exactly a dominant performance. Ebner’s team was eliminated quickly from the Olympics, as well.
Yes, LeBron James is 6-foot-8 and weighs 250 pounds. Incredibly, he is quicker than men smaller than him and stronger than men bigger than him. He has immense physical abilities that hardly make sense fitting into the receptacle they come in, not unlike Mary Poppins’s lamp and coat rack.
I like LeBron James. I think he is the best basketball player in the world. His athleticism consistently amazes me, but he is not a talent chameleon. He has worked tirelessly on his game, which is the primary reason LeBron can do nearly anything he wants on a basketball court. But that is where his world domination and jurisdiction ends. Hopefully, it can be where this conversation ends too.
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