Arguably the best basketball player in the NBA considered trying his skills on the gridiron at one point.
Yes, LeBron James, during the NBA lockout in July 2011, started to shift how he worked out to possibly prepare for playing football. “The thoughts came into my mind,” James said on The Uninterrupted’s “After Party” show. “I had no idea how long the lockout was going to be.”
The NBA lockout had begun in July 2011 and wasn’t settled until December. When October came around, James and his personal trainer, Mike Mancias, began adjusting the workouts to prepare for football.
“We really started to actually train to be a football player,” James said. “We started to clock our times with the 40s. 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.”
With the two being Dallas Cowboys fans, Mancias, a Texas native, began encouraging James while teasing him with the thought of actually playing for the NFL team.
“It’s crazy because I actually never run on the field in my dreams,” James said. “It always gets to the point where I’m either in the locker room or getting dressed or talking about or seeing the fans and as soon as I’m about to run on the field, something else happens in my dream. It’s like something that it always happens like that.”
The NBA player received an offer to play for the team from Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, but, according to James’ business partner and friend, Maverick Carter, that contract was never signed.
“I know he got a contract from Jerry Jones,” Carter said on the show, “that he framed and put in his office.”