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LeBron might return to Team USA in 2020 to play for 'the greatest NBA coach of all time'
Despite deciding to forego suiting up for the U.S. men’s national basketball team at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, LeBron James made it clear last week that — unlike longtime friend and newly minted three-time gold medalist Carmelo Anthony — he has not retired from Team USA, and that he remains open to the idea of donning the red, white and blue again in Tokyo in 2020.
One big reason why the Cleveland Cavaliers superstar, four-time NBA Most Valuable Player, three-time NBA champion and two-time Olympic gold medalist might be interested in returning to the national team? The chance to play under the watchful eye of San Antonio Spurs head coach Gregg Popovich, who will take the reins of USA Basketball now that Mike Krzyzewski has concluded his run after three straight trips to the top of the Summer Games podium.
From Jeff Zillgitt of USA TODAY:
In an interview with ESPN’s Rachel Nichols, James left the door open for a return to the U.S. basketball team for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and in a subsequent interview with USA TODAY Sports, James said, “It would be pretty amazing to be able to actually play for the greatest NBA coach of all time.” […]
“First of all, Coach K and Gregg Popovich are two my favorites of all time,” James said. “To be able to play for Coach K in the [2008 and 2012] Olympics and [2006 FIBA] World Championships and to be able to go against Coach Pop in the NBA, it would be a treat. Obviously, my body has to continue to be in the form that it is today four years from now.”
Some will take issue with James’ assertion that Popovich is the greatest NBA coach of all time rather than, say, 11-time champion Phil Jackson, Boston Celtics architect Red Auerbach or Pat Riley (though LeBron might not be all that interested in giving Riles much dap these days). But there’s long been mutual admiration between James and Popovich, whose teams have faced off in the NBA Finals three times — in 2007, with the Spurs sweeping James’ upstart Cavs, and in back-to-back title fights in 2013 and 2014, with LeBron’s Miami Heat winning the first bout in a seven-game classic and San Antonio taking the rematch in a five-game clinic.
Their shared respect reaches farther back, though, as Buck Harvey of the San Antonio Express-News wrote in 2013:
[Popovich] had [James] nine years ago in Athens [during the 2004 Summer Olympics]. Then, Popovich was an assistant on the Olympic team, and one of his disagreements with Larry Brown was what to do with the young guys. Given the old ones, Popovich argued someone such as James should play.
Maybe that’s why, according to someone who knows James, the four-time MVP has always had considerable respect for Popovich.
Like the rest of us, Popovich has watched James develop over the years from a precocious talent into one of the greatest players the game’s ever seen. Unlike many of us, though, the five-time NBA champion and three-time NBA Coach of the Year has a keen appreciation for just how much noise James has had to learn to tune out on that journey, and it’s led him to laud LeBron’s growth as both a person and a player. From a chat with the media during the 2013 Finals:
He’s a grown man. He doesn’t need any of you to tell him anything.
He knows more than all of you put together. He understands the game. If he makes a pass and you all think he should have shot it, or he shoots it and you think he should have made a pass, your opinions mean nothing to him, as they should not mean anything to him.
He’s a great player, and his decisions are what they are to gain. All decisions don’t always work out. They didn’t always work out for Michael [Jordan] or Tim Duncan or Shaq or Kobe Bryant or whoever. You make a decision and that’s what you go with.
All the chirp, chirp, chirping about what he should have done, I thought it was hilarious from the beginning. Frankly, I was very happy for him as the year progressed when it became obvious he was comfortable in his own skin and didn’t need to listen to any of you all.
After San Antonio exacted its revenge on the Heat in the 2014 Finals, James decided to leave South Beach and return to Cleveland, with some reports suggesting that LeBron’s up-close-and-personal exposure to the Spurs — to the culture they built, to the beautiful brand of basketball they played, to the importance of developing a structure in which great players can pass the torch to new generations of talent with an aim toward consistent and perpetual competition for championships — helped influence his decision to seek something beyond what he’d been part of in Florida. Prior to the Spurs’ first meeting with the Cavs in the fall of 2014, Pop pooh-poohed that notion; in doing so, though, he heaped more praise on James’ overall gifts. From Chris Haynes of cleveland.com:
“He’s a great player. He’s not just athletic. He’s incisive. He understands the game the way Magic [Johnson] did, the way Larry [Bird] did, the way Tim Duncan does. He knows a whole lot more of about what he’s doing and what he has been doing than you all. He’s a character guy, he’s good people, and he’s got a great heart.” […]
“I’m just happy for him whether he went to Timbuktu, he should do what’s best for him, his family,” he said. “Everybody else can go swim in a lake. You all do what you want to do; LeBron should be able to do what he loves to do.”
James, for his part, returned Pop’s plaudits during an interview at 2016’s All-Star Weekend in Toronto. From Michael Singer of USA TODAY:
“I’ve studied a lot from the outside looking in,” James said. “I can’t be there on a day-to-day basis. I wish I could. I believe he’s one of the great basketball minds that we’ve ever had in this game, and I wish I could be around him every day to kind of just pick his brain and see what he does, what he thinks. I believe I think the game, I’m not going to say in a similar fashion because he has more experience than me, but I think I have a high basketball IQ, too.”
Given the sky-high regard in which they hold one another and James’ status as one of the foundational pieces of the rebuilding of USA Basketball after disappointing showings at the 2002 FIBA World Championship in Indianapolis, the 2004 Summer Games in Athens and the 2006 FIBA Worlds in Japan, it seems likely that if LeBron wants to return to the fold in 2020, Pop will find a spot for him.
Yes, James will be 35 when the ball goes up in Tokyo, but it’s far from out of the question for the U.S. to field a squad with a veteran mentor figure prominently involved. Larry Bird (35) and Magic Johnson (32) occupied such spots with the inaugural Dream Team in 1992. John Stockton (34), Charles Barkley (33), Hakeem Olajuwon (33) and Karl Malone (33) all suited up in 1996. Tim Hardaway was 33 in Sydney in 2000; Jason Kidd was 35 in Beijing in 2008; Kobe Bryant was 33 in London in 2012. If LeBron’s body holds up well enough over the next four years to allow him to credibly get up and down the floor in Japan, he’d seem a natural fit for that same kind of role — especially with USA Basketball chairman Jerry Colangelo saying after Sunday’s victory win in Rio that he believes a more experienced squad will be necessary to earn a fourth straight gold medal in Tokyo.
As indestructible as he’s seemed during his remarkable 13-year career, it’s worth noting that it’s no sure thing James’ body will afford him or Team USA that opportunity in four years’ time. He’ll enter this season with the historic workload of six straight NBA Finals and nearly 48,000 combined regular-season, postseason and international-competition minutes on his legs, with an expectation of another deep playoff run to come in Cleveland this year alongside teammates and fellow gold medalists Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love, and with the weight of continuing to carry Cleveland on his shoulders. At some point, everyone wears down, which is why James has couched his recent comments with the “health permitting” caveat.
Here’s hoping he stays mobile enough to make it happen, though. A years-in-the-making partnership between James and Popovich — two of the game’s great minds, two of the titans who have defined this generation of basketball, two of the largest-looming legends of the era — in pursuit of gold and glory would add an extra bit of luster to the hoops competition at the Tokyo Games, and give all of us something to look forward as we work our way through the next four summers.
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Dan Devine is an editor for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at devine@yahoo-inc.com or follow him on Twitter!
