LeBron James Explains How Retiring Is Like Proposing To Your Girlfriend

Sports are often used as a metaphor for something else. Normally, it’s something violent, like a battle or war. The matchup between offensive and defensive linemen in football, for example, is commonly referred to as the battle in the trenches. LeBron James, however, decided to compare sports, or at least an event that happens in sports, to something much more peaceful: love.

While talking about Kobe Bryant’s retirement, and when a player knows how to retire, LeBron said it’s much like proposing to a girlfriend: there’s no seminal moment of clarity, you just one day decide the time is right. At first, we weren’t sure the metaphor was particularly apt, but then we remembered that LeBron dated his wife for a long time before actually proposing, so he’d probably know better.

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