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LeBron James knows his basketball career is probably winding to a close. But his legacy is still being built.
James spoke about how he hopes to be remembered during the latest episode of The Shop (15:30 mark):
“From time to time I do think about how I want to be remembered. And I hope that it’s not just the game of basketball. I feel like if it’s just the game of basketball that people talk about, I feel like I’ve kinda failed my mission. The things I do in my community, the way that Savannah and I raised our kids, my relationship with my single-parent mother, my friendship with my guys; picking up my people from my home town… If those conversations don’t hit the barbershop, if those conversations don’t hit people’s emails and blogs, forums, whatever the case may be, then I feel like my mission wasn’t completed. And I’m not done. I’m old as f–k in basketball terms, but I’m super young in life. So I still have so much more work to do.”
James may indeed be old in basketball terms, at 39, but he remains one of the elite players in the game. Alongside winning a gold medal for Team USA in this summer’s Olympics, he’s also fresh off a season that saw him average 25.7 points, 8.3 assists and 7.3 rebounds per game.
He may very well be the embodiment of the cliché that 40 is the new 30.