In a new, wide-ranging interview, Cleveland Cavaliers star forward LeBron James worried that he would never beat the record compiled by NBA legend Michael Jordan. James also said he does not have the impact on social activism that Muhammad Ali , and he once again attacked President Donald Trump.
In the interview with GQ, James said he felt confident that he could tie or even break Jordan’s amazing six-title NBA championship record but is still “chasing Jordan’s ghost.”
The 32-year-old James also said that he didn’t want to keep playing until he was “washed up,” but he did think it would be fun if he could play long enough to face his son at the pro level. He also joked that he had a plan to play his son, too. “I’ll foul the s— out of him!” he said.
However, James also had a message regarding race, for his son. He wants his children to learn that no matter how successful, or famous they may become, they are also African Americans.
“I have to go home and talk to my 13- and 10-year-old sons, even my 2-year-old daughter, about what it means to grow up being an African-American in America,” James told the magazine. “Because no matter how great you become in life, no matter how wealthy you become, how people worship you, or what you do, if you are an African-American man or African-American woman, you will always be that.”
He said he also cautions his children to be respectful to the police, and that if they are ever stopped to call him and put him on speaker as the officer conducts his stop.
The magazine also focused on James’s passion for left-wing “social activism,” by asking if he thought he could be as influential as Muhammad Ali was in his lifetime. The magazine also asked, absurdly, whether his confrontation with President Trump compared with Ali’s activism against the Vietnam War.
Basketball’s biggest current player prudently waved off that characterization of his own social activism.
“I think Ali represented something bigger than Ali,” James answered. “He wanted to make a change for a future without him included. That’s what Ali brought to the table. I don’t know what it’s like to live in every state in this country, but I know freedom. I know the opportunity that our country has given people, and to see the guy in charge now not understanding that is baffling to not only myself but to my friends and to the people that’ve helped grow this country.”
As to Ali’s relationship to the Vietnam War, James said, “I don’t think me and Donald Trump could ever get to that point.”
James was smart not to take that bait. Blind hatred for a president and months of name calling is hardly in the same class as trying to get an entire country to stop a war.
James went on to attack the president as a leader “shirking his responsibility” to inspire America.
“The positive that I see from being the president … well, not with the president we have right now because there’s no positive with him, but the positive that I’ve seen is being able to inspire,” James exclaimed.
Trump’s inability to inspire would be news to the hundreds of millions of Americans who voted for him and his promise to: “Make America Great Again.”
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston.