Why do LeBron James’ feet look like something you’d see in a horror movie?

We’re not here to drag LeBron James, feet, or LeBron James’ feet. 

What we are here to do is spread knowledge – to get the word out about the physical peril that people like LeBron James put themselves in every time that they transport themselves into the digital plane of the Warner 3000 Serververse, as James famously did in the 2021 major motion picture Space Jam: A New Legacy. No matter how cool it might seem, the process of having one’s physical and spiritual essence converted into software, then toyed with at the mercy of the unscrupulous sentient program Al-G Rhythm, is not without consequences, and young people need to know what they’re getting into before this becomes a TikTok Challenge, or a Snapchat Double-Dare, or a DivX Peer Pressure Fad, or something. 

Below, we present for your consideration the feet of LeBron James. They have clearly been through some stuff, and there’s really only one explanation: They were destroyed in James’ valiant battle to save WB’s catalog of IPs through zany cartoon athletic competition. Or, you know, he’s been playing professional basketball for over 20 years and his toes got kind of messed up.

LeBron James, weird feet, and the price of greatness

Remember that scene in Airplane! in which Kareem Abdul-Jabbar grabs the kid and shouts, “Tell your old man to drag Walton and Lanier up and down the court for 48 minutes?” That sort of “you think this is easy? You try it” vibe? That’s sort of the energy that you can carry into the explanation of what happened to LeBron James’ feet. 

James has been playing in the NBA since 2003. That was four presidential administrations ago. He’s estimated to have shared the court with over a third of all NBA players in history. When LeBron James started playing for the Cleveland Cavaliers, Millie Bobby Brown hadn’t been born yet, and all of the Golden Girls were still alive. 

That’s a lot of time to spend on your feet, regularly moving your body in ways that most people will never, ever get close to. That sort of long-term stress can mess with the biggest, strongest bones in your body, let alone the delicate phalanges and metatarsals that make up the human foot. All sorts of athletes, artists, and craftsmen that repeat the same motions over and over wind up with this sort of thing, too – Ballerinas pretty famously spend their retirement walking around on a pair of knuckles, and Keith Richards’ hands look like what happens when you try to draw hands from memory. In short, greatness is pain.