Wednesday, June 26 was not only the first day of the
2024 NBA Draft, but it was also the 21-year anniversary of the historic 2003 NBA Draft that featured the likes of Dwyane Wade, Carmelo Anthony, Chris Bosh and, of course, the top overall pick LeBron James.
A four-time MVP, four-time NBA champion, 20-time All-Star and the league’s all-time leading scorer, James undoubtedly made the right decision in jumping straight from high school to the world’s best basketball league.
However, there’s also been the question of how James would have been in a different athletic environment—a football field.
At the 2003 NBA Combine, the then 18-year-old James measured 6-foot-7 and ¼ without shoes, weighed 245 pounds and had 6.7 percent body fat. Since then, James has grown and was listed at 6-foot-9 and 250 pounds last season, so he certainly had the size and physique at any point of his 21-year NBA career to play football. That led to someone of a similar physical stature, Rob Gronkowski, to speculate how James would have performed on the gridiron.
During an interview on the podcast of former New England Patriots teammate Julian Edelman, Gronkowski hypothesized what type of football player James would have been.
“LeBron would have been an absolute monster on the football field,”
Gronkowski said. “I can kind of see him being the hybrid F-tight end. He’s just so tall, but he’s got the athleticism to be able to pull off the F position. I don’t see him being a true Y, throwing himself at defensive ends, nine-techniques, D-ends that are 280 [pounds], 290. I don’t see him doing that. I see him blocking the linebackers, blocking the safeties when needed but also just dominating in the pass game. I mean he’s a freak of an athlete.”
The F-tight end is also known as the H-back in some offenses and is essentially the move tight end that is more receiver than blocker. It can line up all over the field from out wide to in the slot to the backfield to in-line. Meanwhile, the Y-tight end is more blocker than pass-catcher, so Gronkowski sees James’ athleticism as best utilized as a move tight end a la someone like Travis Kelce of the Kansas City Chiefs.
“I really wish he tried out for the NFL,” Gronkowski continued. “Remember there was talk for about three to four years about 10 years ago that a couple of NFL teams were trying to give him an opportunity. I think coach [Pete] Carroll offered him a roster spot up in Seattle. I just was hoping to see that happen. I just wanted to see that athleticism transfer to the football field because I’ve seen his high school highlights, and the guy was just an absolute beast.”
Gronkowski clearly knows his history as during the 2011 NBA lockout, when James was coming off his first season with the Miami Heat at 26 years of age, then-Seahawks coach
Pete Carroll invited James to work out for the team. That was despite James being 10 years removed from last playing competitive football as a junior in high school.
James did play football at St. Vincent-St. Mary High School in Akron, Ohio, and he was more than just a token player. He suited up for his sophomore and junior seasons with the varsity team as a wide receiver, making First-Team All-State as a sophomore and scoring 27 touchdowns in his high school career. He did not play football as a senior with his basketball career on the rise.
During a Monday Night Football broadcast in 2022, James was asked by Peyton and Eli Manning about his football exploits and if it was tough to give up the sport.
“Absolutely. I still love football to this day. Just getting out there, playing, Friday Night Lights back in high school was something I enjoyed every Friday,”
answered James. “It was definitely challenging and tough to walk away from the game.
“If I would have had a better quarterback in high school, I might have continued to play football. But I took way too many hits, and that led me to the basketball court.”
The list of athletes who transitioned from basketball to football, and specifically the tight end position, is a long and illustrious one. Hall of Fame tight ends Mike Ditka and Tony Gonzalez played college basketball before transitioning to football full-time. Additionally, Antonio Gates only played basketball in college, signed as an undrafted free agent afterward with the San Diego Chargers, and went on to become the all-time leader in touchdowns by a tight end. Amazingly, of the four tight ends with the
most touchdowns in NFL history, three of them played college basketball, with the lone outlier being Gronkowski, who played high school hoops.
