LeBron James: Handballer, High Jumper, Gymnast?

If you’ve been paying any attention to handball, you probably know that America is terrible. That probably shouldn’t surprise you; if you’re like me, you barely knew about the sport before the Olympics started. But if you actually watch the sport, it immediately becomes clear that America should dominate. It involves a lot of running, throwing, dribbling, passing and everything else that America loves and is really good at. What’s even more surprising is the fact that the USSR won more gold medals in the event than anyone else. At the very least, you would think that Richard Nixon would feel that national security was being threatened and personally handpick his own team.

(fnt-usa.org)

Anyway, while I was watching the sport the other day, I couldn’t stop thinking about how great the U.S. basketball team would fair at the sport. It wouldn’t even be hard — they would probably only need three or four practices to learn the game and be great at it. LeBron James seems to be specifically tailor made for this game, but that’s mostly because he is such an insane athlete, and you could put him in almost any Olympic event and he could compete. So just for fun, I decided to speculate on how LeBron and the rest of Team USA would compete in other events.

Beach Volleyball

This is a sport where tall guys with long wingspans can excel. The movements aren’t that dissimilar to basketball so it wouldn’t take long to pick up. While watching the American men play volleyball, I couldn’t help but think that Anthony Davis would completely dominate the game. Don’t get me wrong: the thought of having The 'Brow represent America like a foreign diplomat scares me, but shot blockers are really important in the game. Miraculously, while I was writing this piece, I found a video which might prove my theory right, if someone would teach Kevin Durant the rules.

Swimming

Again, this is a sport where long wingspans can give athletes a huge advantage. I don’t know how good Team USA is at swimming, but I think they could pick it up with time. The only exception would be James Harden, whose beard would cause way to much drag in the pool.

100m Dash

I doubt LeBron could ever medal, but if there was a heavyweight division (and who wouldn’t want to see 250 lb. guys racing each other?) I would expect him to take the gold.

High Jump

Again, he might not be one of the best in the world, but if you add a heavyweight division (which might be even more entertaining than big guys running), I expect another gold for LBJ.

Gymnastics

This would take LeBron a lot longer to train for than the rest of the competitions, but if he wanted to, I doubt anyone could stop him. He’s a great jumper, which would help on the floor routine, and has great upper body strength for the rings.


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