PARIS — Maybe Bronny wasn’t available. LeBron James will handle it instead, the male flagbearer for the U.S.
Olympic team as it floats on a barge down the River Seine in the athletes’ parade ahead of Friday’s opening ceremony at the Paris Games. He and tennis star Coco Gauff were selected for the prestigious honor by their fellow athletes. “Super appreciative and super humbled by it,” James said.
You can’t blame him. You’re handed the flag for opening ceremony at an Olympics, you take it and wave the stars and bars proudly. Blame the process then.
Blame their fellow athletes. It’s a poor choice. Gracious, yes.
Successful, yes. Representative of the majority of fellow Olympians standing behind him on the barge? No. They’re all wearing the same red, white and blue gear.
The similarities pretty much end there. The Olympics are not basketball’s pinnacle to American players and public, not in the same way they are for fencers, kayakers, archers and the thousands of athletes who toil in anonymity (and, sadly, poverty) for three years and 50 weeks, awaiting their 17-day sliver of sunshine. The NBA regular season and playoffs are more important.
The NCAA Tournament even is. James was so committed to the Olympic movement that he, along with several other marquee players, skipped the 2016 and 2020 Summer Games purportedly “to rest his body” for the upcoming NBA season — although it might not be a coincidence that the specter of street crime and the Zika viru.