the nba really has exemplified america's
struggle
uh with the copen 19 virus they
did everything they could to follow the
center for disease control uh guidelines
and were able to
have a tournament where no one got ill
they showed their concern for social
issues but they also
showed their concern for health issues
and
their families i thought they did a
remarkable job of
exemplifying a common sense approach to
all of the issues and problems that we
have had to face this year
and if as you said it has been a very
tough year
the pressure on lebron james in
particular must have been immense
the death of his friend kobe bryant in
january the pandemic the response to the
death of george floyd as we said
yet he was able to concentrate on
playing you of all people must
understand how hard that was for him
i only have a a small idea that i i
never had to go and isolate
for for what how how long they isolated
three months uh
about that you're not seeing your family
uh
having to train every day uh you know
just uh
you in your in your hotel room but that
that's uh that's a burden i didn't have
to have to bear i i was able to have
some type of normalcy
away from the game he's sending a whole
uh
school district to college you know all
the kids in that school district where
he grew up have the opportunity to go to
college if they can get in
he's going to fund that that's
remarkable
lebron could be doing a number of other
things with his money uh
even if he just counted it you know but
he this is
this is how he uh makes his efforts i i
have to
uh speak about you know that remarkable
sense of uh of leadership
do you think sports players can now
help in the quest for racial and social
justice in this country
i know they can i i know that uh
so many young people uh
they gravitate toward their their sports
heroes
they've taken polls that have shown that
uh sports heroes are
the people that young people look up to
the most
after their parents and that's a that's
a significant
platform and i i think so many of the uh
professional athletes have made great
use of their platform to
try to affect change in a positive way
just very briefly how did you
celebrate
well i was really happy for though you
know it because uh
it's uh it reminds me of something that
happened
in my career where i i got to play with
a younger player that enabled me to
get over the top you know when i joined
forces with
magic johnson
you