A Brief History of the Career of LeBron James

There comes a time in the life span of every culture when it becomes necessary to think obsessively about LeBron James.

The ancient Greeks had to do it in the 5th century B.C., when LeBron James was the most dominant athlete in the Olympic Games. Although he was still just a teenager, he won every event with apparent ease: body grappling, mule tossing, javelin throwing, olive swallowing, stone crushing, bird squashing, neck slapping and running all over the place extremely fast.

And yet he suffered from one inexplicable weakness. As Herodotus tells it in “Histories”: “LeBron James — he of the wide forehead and the lumpy shoulders — was a source of much public debate and wonder. His strength and skill were such that his opponents not only lost but they also frequently fled the field weeping bitter tears. Every year, however, when the final and most prestigious event of the Games arrived — the discus throw, in which a victory would have guaranteed LeBron eternal glory — his interest seemed to vanish, like the morning mist, and could not by any means be roused. For no discernible reason, LeBron would slump listlessly to the edge of the field, refusing to throw, sometimes even handing the discus to his friend Demetrus and asking him to throw it in his place. The gods, of course, frowned on such behavior. And so it was that the wrinkliest forehead in all of Greece never felt the touch of the laurel.” It is also to this period that most scholars date Plato’s famous dialogue “On Clutchness.”

Eight hundred years later, LeBron James was the most accomplished gladiator in the entire Roman Empire — this despite the fact that he fought not in the Colosseum but in one of the empire’s smaller arenas, very near the town of his birth. Using his trademark gold-tipped trident, he slew bears, lions, elephants, jaguars, ostriches and every variety of man: Moors, Gauls, Huns, Picts, Danes, Angles and Jutes. The legend of LeBron spread rapidly across the empire. Soon he won enough fights to earn his freedom, which gave him the choice to either walk away or to continue fighting, in the arena of his choosing, for what would surely be abundant wealth and fame. The emperor himself lobbied for LeBron James to come fight in Rome, where he would perform in front of the most knowledgeable and passionate gladiator fans in the world.