LeBron James calls out youth sports trend, Blake Griffin weighs in

LeBron James doesn’t think kids need to pick one sport and make it their year-round job. Especially when those kids are still learning how to tie their shoes.

Steve Nash raised the subject on Mind the Game, describing the pressure on families to commit to a single sport when their children are just 6, 7 or 8 years old.

“That’s the worst thing you can do,” James said.

Which gave Blake Griffin an opening. Reacting on The Stepback Show, Griffin brought up the familiar meme of James pleading with former Cavaliers teammate J.R. Smith to shoot.

“Do you know how bad something has to be for LeBron James to call it the worst thing you can do?” Griffin said, via a clip shared by NBABase. “When he’s already got a meme about the worst thing you can do? ‘Just shoot it. It’s right there. Just shoot it.’”

Funny, yes. But Griffin also had a point beyond the punchline.

“That worst thing you can do, they’re talking about, is the defining philosophy of modern youth sports,” he said.

Nash’s concern centered on how that philosophy gets sold. He recalled playing different sports throughout the year, with each season costing roughly $100. Then came the business opportunity of convincing parents that their child might have a future in a particular sport, provided the family committed to it year-round.

The promise is opportunity. The expectation is that a young kid starts making choices as if a college scholarship or professional career already depends on them.

You can understand why parents buy in. Nobody wants to hear that their child is falling behind, particularly when someone is offering a plan to prevent it. But there’s a pretty big leap between helping a kid get better and deciding one sport needs to fill the calendar before that kid turns 9.

Nash was questioning that arrangement. James needed only eight words to say how he felt about it. Griffin found the joke, then brought the discussion right back to what they were criticizing.

“You spent more time on the bench than Clarence Thomas… I had injuries in my career, but my only overuse injury was at the start of my rookie year,” he said. “I worked really hard to be the No. 1 pick, pushed through Oklahoma, March Madness, combines, workouts, draft, Summer League, preseason — and then, in medical terms, my kneecap took a giant sh*t.

“The takeaway isn’t that I got hurt, it’s that I didn’t get hurt sooner. By that time, recovering was my job. I was getting paid with an entire team’s resources behind me. Kids today might have that injury in high school, and it’s gonna take a lot of car washes to pay for that treatment.”

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