LeBron recently opened up about his experience as a flag bearer for Team USA at the Paris Olympics.
The NBA great admitted that he actually didn’t understand the importance of the flag bearer’s role before.
“I had an idea that I could part of the finalists to carry the flag for our country,” LeBron said on The Shop. “But to be honest, I didn’t understand the significance of it, I didn’t know how prestigious it was, I didn’t know how much of a grand thing it was. I grew up watching the Olympics but I didn’t grow up seeing who was the flag carrier or flag bearer, things of that nature. Those are the things that kind of like, I never saw that before. Once I was getting closer and closer to the moment, and then Steph Curry did the video congratulating me on it, if you guys saw it, he’s an unbelievable person, unbelievable guy and I thank him for what he did. And then being there with my teammates and getting that moment, that’s when it kind of started hitting me.
“Then people from home, my wife congratulating me on it, the fam congratulating me. Then once we actually got to the Opening Ceremony and it was like five minutes until it’s time for you to go up there and carry the flag, I started to feel very nervous. Super nervous. I get nervous before every ballgame too, but this was different nerves. I was representing the entire country at that moment.
“I just thought about it just in the sense of my grandkids and kids’ kids’ kids and the generations and people in my community, kids who look like me and come from my background and areas that are not promised to make it to the next day. To be able to see an inspiration like that, hopefully I inspired so many.
“Not only in America though, but even other kids in different countries globally to want to be a flag bearer in the Olympics as well and just be a representation of what positivity is. There’s so much negative shit going on in the world, not only in America which we live in, we see all the negativity. To be able to have that shining moment right there, to be able to just have positivity for all of our people, no matter the race, no matter the color of your skin, no matter what you believe in, it was like a unity thing. It was pretty cool. It was pretty cool, for sure.”
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