LeBron James is a mine of crazy stories, and it’s not just about his performance on the field. The Chosen One is equally impressive before kick-off, notably having a pretty mind-boggling routine.
The first thing that comes to mind when you think of LeBron James, it’s obviously his absolutely terrifying physique. At 37, the winger is still in crazy shape, taking extremely good care of his body. As a result, he’s nearly as athletically dominant as he was when he first started, whether against beefier insides or livelier outsiders. It’s not for nothing that he finished 2021-22 with 30 points per game!
However, it would be unfair to reduce the four-time champion to that, as the latter is also a model in terms of training ethics. In this case, LBJ works a lot on his technique, in order to erase as many of his faults as possible. The best example is still his shot: very mediocre when he arrived in the league, he managed to perfect it until he was able to shoot a success between 35 and 40% behind the arc, very correct figures within the league.
In the end, however, what impresses most about him is perhaps his basketball IQ. The Chosen One is a true student of the game, constantly looking for flaws in his opponents. An anecdote dating from 2012, when he played in Miami illustrates this well. The magazine Sports Illustrated explained that L-Train analyzed the opposition very closely before each match, even if it meant having information sheets as long as your arm at your disposal!
LeBron’s incredible pre-game analysis sheet
The standard report given to Heat players before games is two pages long. The one James receives has four, filled with advanced stats just for coaches, bloggers and Shane Battier. “I want to know if this guy drives to the basket on his left 70% of the time, if he takes pull-ups when he goes to his right or if he likes to cross-over after two dribbles,” explains James .
Even when he’s in the company of friends, he sometimes gets ecstatic and talks about basketball and statistics in the middle of a casual conversation: “Remember that time when I drove to the basket and I took the ball out to Ray Allen in the fourth minute of the second quarter. If he had shifted into the corner, we would have had a better shot. »
The King is rumored to have an eidetic memory, which allows him to recall an absolutely staggering amount of information, including game calls dating back several years. Clearly, it is an encyclopedia of the orange ball on its own! A real treasure for each franchise he went through, since it could help to take the tactical advantage over opponents. With four champion rings, we can say that it was effective.
With his basketball IQ well above average, LeBron James studies the game as much as possible in order to know the strengths and weaknesses of his opponents. That’s how you recognize the greatest, and it’s also proof that the King loves to control everything on the pitch.
