LeBron James is approaching his 16th All-Star Game in his 17 years in the league. With that track record come plenty of memories and two of his former Cleveland Cavaliers teammates, Kendrick Perkins and Tristan Thompson, can vouch for some extraordinary stories about The King.
Perkins remembers James as an avid card player, a modest one, but one never shy of taking his friends’ money in card games:
Per Joe Vardon and Jason Lloyd of The Athletic:
“There’s one thing about LeBron. For some reason, when we play cards, he is really just the Chosen One,” said Perkins. “I’ve never seen him lose at anything. We will be playing cards and I’d be like, “Who won?’ He’d be like, “Sh*t, not me. I lost,” and he’d try to put it on somebody else, but he’d have all the cash in his hand. Like he would never lose. I’ve never seen him take an “L.” It was crazy. He’d never lose and I told him, “You’re just the Chosen One. And then like, everything you touch is gold.” I don’t know what it is about him, but he always wins.”
Thompson, who played four seasons with the Cavs next to James, has seen plenty of his eating habits — even late in his career — and he’s equally bamboozled to see someone so chiseled eat with such lack of discipline.
“He has the worst f***ing diet ever,” said Thompson. “Ask him what he eats for breakfast. He has like five french toast, drowns it in syrup with strawberries and bananas. Then he has like a four-egg omelette and then he goes and just f***ing dunks on somebody. It doesn’t make sense.
“He eats desserts with every meal. He’ll come with his one-week diet, vegan crap, but he literally eats like it doesn’t make sense,” added Thompson. “He’s really a specimen. He eats like sh*t. I remember one year I tried to eat like he ate and it just didn’t work out. I started gaining weight and said, “F*** this.” I mean it works for him. He loves sweets. He loves sweets. He eats desserts and French toast. It’s crazy how his body just burns it.”
James is indeed a freak of nature. He spends about a million dollars in his health to help him stay in shape. He works out in front of Instagram in the offseason. He’s a weight room stud. Yet he’s a trash compactor when it comes to consuming carbs and letting his 6-foot-8, 250-pound frame burn it all by game time.
Despite having a similar frame, even Thompson couldn’t do a diet like that. But had he listened to Perk, he’d known that you never bet against King James.