Could LeBron James have made it in the NFL? Nearly 10 years ago, the world was close to finding out an answer.
During a recent episode of Uninterrupted’s WRTS: After Party, the Los Angeles Lakers star revealed that he started training to play football when the NBA went into a lockout before the start of the 2011-2012 season.
“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,” James, 35, said on the show.
“We started to clock our times with the 40s,” he continued. “We started to add a little bit more with the bench press and things of that nature. We started to add a little more sled to our agenda with our workouts.”
While football and basketball couldn’t be more different, for James, the jump between the two sports wouldn’t have been crazy. That’s because he previously played football for St. Vincent-St. Mary High School in Ohio.
James played wide receiver and made first-team all-state as a sophomore, according to NFL.com. A year later, James amassed 57 receptions for 1,160 yards and 16 touchdowns.
