LeBron named flagbearer for U.S. Olympic team at opening ceremony

LeBron James wasn’t totally sure what the opening ceremony was all about when he was picked for his first Olympics in 2004.

This time, he’ll be one of the stars of the show.

James has been picked by his fellow U.S. Olympians to serve as the male flagbearer for the Americans in Friday night’s opening ceremony for the Paris Games. He becomes the third basketball player — and the first men’s player — to carry the U.S. flag at the start of an Olympics, joining Dawn Staley for the Athens Games in 2004 and Sue Bird for the Tokyo Games that happened in 2021.

The 39-year-old James got word of the honor Monday in London, a few hours before the U.S. men’s team was scheduled to play its final pre-Olympics exhibition game against World Cup champion Germany.

The female U.S. flagbearer is expected to be revealed Tuesday. The International Olympic Committee decided in 2020 that national delegations would have two flagbearers — one male, one female — at the opening ceremony at an Olympics, a move to promote gender parity. The U.S. is expected to have nearly 600 athletes in the Paris Games, about 53% of them female.

James — a global icon, a four-time NBA champion and the league’s all-time leading scorer set to go into his record-tying 22nd NBA season — is set to play in the Olympics for the fourth time, after he was part of U.S. teams that won bronze in 2004, gold at Beijing in 2008 and gold again in London in 2012. He walked in the opening ceremony at each of his three previous Olympics.

This time, he’ll float.

This will be an opening ceremony like none other in Olympic history: Thousands of athletes will be part of a flotilla sailing along the River Seine at sunset toward the Eiffel Tower. It’s a 3.7-mile route, with about 320,000 guests set to watch from the river bank and about 1 billion more watching on televisions around the world.




(AP Photo Kin Cheung)