LOS ANGELES (AFP) – Four-time NBA Most Valuable Player LeBron James is a “possibility” for the defending champion US team at the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games but says he will skip this year’s World Cup in China.
The 34-year-old forward for the Los Angeles Lakers told The Athletic website in a story posted Monday that he will begin production on the movie “Space Jam 2” during this off-season and how he feels after next season will determine his chances of playing for gold in Japan next year.
“That’s a possibility,” James said. “It depends on how I feel. I love the Olympics.”
James spent most of the 2004 Athens Olympics on the bench as a US team of NBA stars settled for bronze, then served as the backbone of a revamped program that won Olympic gold in 2008 at Beijing and 2012 in London.
He did not play for the American squad that captured a third consecutive title in 2016 at Rio.
James is entering the earliest NBA off-season he has known, the Lakers having benched him for the finish of the campaign due to a left groin injury that has nagged him since late December.
This season snaps an eight-year run of NBA Finals appearances for James, who captured two titles with the Miami Heat and another with the Cleveland Cavaliers, whom he left as a free agent to join the Lakers last July.
