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It’s one of those perfect philosophical sports questions: how great of an NFL player would LeBron James be? Would he be a quarterback? Defensive tackle? Tight end or wide receiver seems like it may be the best fit. Clippers head coach Doc Rivers said recently that he thinks James may have been the best NFL player of all-time.
“I really believe if LeBron James had to play football, he may have been the greatest football player ever,” Rivers said.
James was a high school wide receiver, and eventually stopped to focus on playing basketball. On his UNINTERRUPTED podcast, After Party, James was asked by Paul Rivera if he seriously considered playing football during the 2011 NBA lockout, which lasted 161 days.
It was more than just a passing thought, according to James.
“It actually was [a consideration],” James said. “I had no idea how long the lockout was going to be and myself and my trainer, Mike Mancias, we really started to actually train to be a football player when it came to October and November. We started to clock our times with the 40s, we started to add a little bit more in our bench presses and things of that nature, we started to add more sledding to our agenda with our workouts.”
James said his trainer, started to bring up the possibility of James playing for the Cowboys (both are fans of the team), and James’ business partner, Maverick Carter, added that James has a framed contract offer from Cowboys owner Jerry Jones in his office. James said he still dreams about football.
Of course, that notion of James as a football player has already been conceived, with him becoming a member of the Cleveland Browns:
