Arguably LeBron James’ greatest asset on the basketball court is his mind as he truly has one of the highest basketball IQs in the history of the NBA. But one random way his brain capacity shows itself is with the handshakes he shares with his teammates.
James has elaborate handshakes with seemingly every one of his Los Angeles Lakers’ teammates, but also plenty with other former teammates that stretch back to early in his career. There have even been times where James reunites with one of his old teammates and they break straight into a handshake that hasn’t been done in years and the Lakers’ superstar admits he has no clue how he remembers them all.
“I have no f—ing idea,” James said on the latest episode of his Mind the Game podcast with Steve Nash. “Some of the handshakes are like, I kind of try to learn my teammates over the course of time. Early on I’ll kind of like what they’re into, what they like, things of that nature. Right now, my teammate Dalton Knecht we have a handshake where we kind of dap up and at the end, we kind of throw like a bow and arrow and I kind of got that because of how well he shoots the ball. Last year when he was a rookie, one game he had like 30-something in one of our games and I was just like, flamethrower.
“But also, some of them is just off the top of the head. I’ve been doing it for so long I don’t even know, man. Me and my best friends we’ve been together since we were eight years old, we’ve had handshakes since we were young. I got teammates that I was teammates in like 2008, it’s just, I don’t know. It’s just weird that I can remember a lot of these. Yeah, it’s weird. It’s time consuming. It’s very time consuming. I need to stop, but it’s cool. I don’t know. To answer your question, I have no idea how I remember them.”
Some things are just beyond explanation and James’ handshakes seem to be one of them. Seeing him break into a handshake with a teammate from more than 10 years ago like they have been doing it every day just doesn’t make sense.
The fact that James himself can’t even give a good explanation on it says everything. His brain is so unbelievable that even the man himself is in awe at what it’s capable of.
LeBron James remains motivated by just one thing
No one is sure whether or not James will continue his playing career into next season, but if he does his main motivation remains the same and that is to compete for, and win, an NBA Championship.
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