LeBron James is Too Old for This Shit
Stopping short of taking a pro-vaccination stance, the all-time great seems to be running low on fucks to give
LeBron James looks tired.
It’s to be expected. The NBA season to come is a grind he knows all too well. He’s 36 years old, just two years younger than when whiskey-bloated Michael Jordan finally hung it up with the Wizards.
But James, through 18 seasons and three teams, averaging 27 points, 7.4 rebounds, and 7.4 assists in 1,310 regular-season games, seems eternal. To this point he’s been ageless, timeless, a classic from the moment he stepped on the court in Cleveland wearing a too-baggy jersey and too-long shorts. We recognize him as the last of his kind: a multi-generational superstar with the cross-cultural appeal that transcends his four MVPs, four Finals MVPs, and four championships.
And it’s not just because of his accomplishments or his smile or his ill-advised-yet-somehow endearing all these years later “The Decision” press event that cast him in heroic stone for the rest of us mortals, but more the notion that goes unsaid: that we, as a society—in this format anyway—are closing it down.
Shit’s just gone too crazy. I don’t know anyone who feels normal anymore, centered, at peace. Nobody. No-bo-dy. It’s all a shit show. We no longer have agreed-upon rules. What’s truth. What’s science. What’s right and decent and normal. Nope, that's all gone.
Instead, in their wake, we have the rise of fascism, the slow-moving coup of the Republican party who’ve been working diligently for four decades not to keep progress progressing but to take away the rights of individuals they consider less-than (starting with those who are secular and women and people of color and working their way out.)
This death-cult club of terrifying individuals in ill-fitting t-shirts, a cohort best represented by the majority of the 100 million people in this country who identify as Evangelical Christians, are manifest. They represent everything we’ve morphed into—and that is, frankly, bad. Bad skin. Bad hair. Bad judgement. Bad faith. Bad all around bad.
Denial of facts in favor of magical thinking. Skepticism and grift in favor of research and learning. Putting forth a good face on social media; women in hats, men looking stern with facial hair, too many children to possibly sustain, towheaded and doe-eyed and already with the built-in thousand-yard stare into the abyss of the phone camera lens. A perfectly manicured, make-up’d, curated facsimile of what this life in the dusk of capitalism and the pre-dawn of human extinction looks like.
And the rest of us, including, especially, our real-life heroes like LeBron—are gassed.
So it came as no surprise Tuesday when James was asked about his COVID vaccination status that he came out with a clean, direct, if not reluctant statement.
Yes, he is vaccinated. Yes, he was “very skeptical” at first about the vaccine. Yes, he concluded that it was the “right thing to do” for himself, his family, and his team.
But when asked if he would advocate for others to get the vaccine, he stopped short.
“That’s not my job.”
I get why he said that. It’s not. The White House and the CDC, and elected officials, and government employees, and individual states, and counties, and cities all the way down to his employers, the NBA and the Los Angeles Lakers, it's their job to try to ensure, through common sense logic, bribery, and in the end, financial punishment, that the vaccine is produced, deployed, and gets into the arms of all.
But also, how is it not LeBron’s job?
When Fox News’s Laura Ingraham, the Eva Braun of prime time cable news, told LeBron to “shut up and dribble” in 2018, it became his and the league’s stance to continue to speak up and speak out—in that case, about racial injustice and the experiences of Black Americans.
It was a transcendent moment for James and a defining time for the NBA as they fully aligned with Black Lives Matter and a common struggle for social justice.
White writers like me then get confused as to why James can’t do the same for vaccinations. Aren’t the causes both about the perpetuation of this human experiment? About somehow, some way, righting the ship and making life safer for the masses? Aren’t we talking, essentially, about a better, more just, healthier, more aware society? Aren’t we just trying to get back to whatever normal is/was?
Apparently no.
“I think everyone has their own choice to do what they feel is right for themselves and their family,” James said. “We’re talking about individuals’ bodies,” James. “We’re not talking about something that’s political or racism or police brutality or things of that nature. We’re talking about people’s bodies and well-being, so I don’t think that I should get involved in what other people should do for their bodies and their livelihoods.”
While I disagree with LeBron’s takeaway (the public health and general dissemination of fact-filled and scientific information with a platform as big as his are, in fact, necessary), I understand why he chose the lane he did.
Saturday’s reporting on the anti-vaccination contingent in the NBA players’ union came out loud and clear as Rolling Stone broke the news that “the league continues to have difficulty convincing current superstars to advocate for vaccines” with the players rejecting the NBA’s proposal for a vaccine mandate.
For some not currently in the locker room, the choice of players to not get vaccinated is as perplexing as it is counter to continuing this experiment, as expressed by the NBA’s all-time leading scorer Kareem Abdul-Jabbar who took the opposing view to players creating their own facts in his email to Rolling Stone following publication of the story: “They are failing to live up to the responsibilities that come with celebrity. Athletes are under no obligation to be spokespersons for the government, but this is a matter of public health. By not encouraging their people to get the vaccine, they’re contributing to these deaths. I’m also concerned about how this perpetuates the stereotype of dumb jocks who are unable to look at verified scientific evidence and reach a rational conclusion.”
But LeBron isn’t quite ready to run counter to individuals in the league, his league, who are choosing to take the party line of cowardice and ignorance and framing this as a personal choice—when clearly it’s not.
For now, it’s going to have to be enough that LeBron took care of himself and his family and got vaccinated, and encouraged others in his sphere to do so. But his stopping short of becoming a spokesman for getting back to a fully functioning program speaks volumes. My guess is a lot of it isn’t about his personal stance as much as he’s tired. In the immortal words of Roger Murtaugh, maybe he’s just too old for this shit.
Maybe we all are.
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