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Lakers superstar LeBron James is unquestionably one of the greatest athletes to ever walk the face of the Earth, even now at the age of 35, so it’s reasonable to assume that he’d be successful at just about any sport he tries. NFL fans have been tantalized for years of any and all footage of LeBron touching a football, and with his combination of size, strength, and speed, he’d terrorize NFL defenses as a tight end or receiver.
As it turns out, LeBron James momentarily considered pulling a Michael Jordan and switching sports at the peak of his powers in the NBA. James revealed in a video for Uninterrupted that he began training for football during the NBA lockout of 2011, and he received a contract offer from Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones. James stuck with basketball, though, and went on to win his first NBA championship in the lockout-shortened season.
Which other star athletes could have been phenomenal in a different role? Here are our top three picks.
Usain Bolt in the NFL
During Super Bowl week in 2019, Usain Bolt showed up in sweatpants and sneakers and casually tied John Ross’ NFL record 40-yard dash time. The fastest man alive has dabbled in organized soccer, but at 6-foot-5 with unrivaled speed, Bolt would be the most dangerous deep threat in league history if he had gone through some football training. Bolt said in 2019 he got offers from NFL teams back when he was dominating the Olympics, but was “scared” of the sport at the time. What could have been.
Odell Beckham Jr. in Soccer
Odell Beckham Jr. is seemingly good at just about anything he tries, and he makes everything look easy. He throws searing fastballs off the pitcher’s mound, blasts homers out of MLB stadiums in batting practice, and effortlessly dunks on people in basketball pick-up games. It would have been fascinating, however, if Beckham Jr. would have stuck with soccer as a child.
Beckham’s shown off some serious skills with his feet in videos that have gone viral, but he was actually a U.S. national team prospect as a teenager. Beckham said he was invited to try out for the national team program when he was 14, but opted to stick with football. Had OBJ focused fully on soccer during his teenage years, the USMNT may not have suffered the ultimate embarrassment of failing to qualify for the 2018 World Cup.
Jeff Gordon in Formula 1
NASCAR and Formula 1 may both fall under the category of motorsports, but it’s difficult to find two racing series more different from one another. Gordon got a chance to drive Juan Pablo Montoya’s F1 car around Indianapolis in 2003 and was shockingly quick with very little practice. Gordon never got a chance in open wheel cars after making a name for himself as a teenager, but had he gotten a few different breaks at that time, it’s plausible that he could have become the first American F1 star since Mario Andretti, and introduced an entire nation to the series at a time when Michael Schumacher was dominating. Though F1 is gaining popularity in the U.S., with help from Netflix, there’s still no American driver on the horizon.
Thursday’s Big Winner: LeBron James
With no live basketball occurring and “The Last Dance” leading daytime talk show hosts to ramble on endlessly about how great Michael Jordan is, there has been a unfairly low level of respect attached to James’ name for the past few weeks. Fortunately, all it took for the entire basketball internet to stand behind LeBron was for Paul Pierce to announce that James didn’t make the cut of his top seven all-time NBA players. It’s just another terrible, terrible take from The Truth.
Quick Hits: MLB vs. MLBPA, staying in shape, more ‘Justice League’?
– Charles Curtis has a breakdown of what is sure to be an ugly fight between MLB and the Players’ Union over financial issues that could stand in the way of the 2020 season.
– If you’re looking to stay in shape while also staying at home, we have a collection of 19 of the best free videos to watch.
– Justice League, the superhero blockbuster that was almost universally panned, will have an extended cut from director Zac Snyder released on HBO Max.