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.
“There’s obviously the utmost respect for who he is as a person and a player and how good he is,” fellow U.S. star and first-time Olympian Stephen Curry said earlier this month of James, someone he’s faced off against four times in the NBA Finals and is now teaming up with for the first official time.
The female U.S. flagbearer will be revealed in the coming days. 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 6-kilometer (3.7-mile) route, with about 320,000 guests set to watch from the river bank and about 1 billion more, Olympic officials estimate, watching on televisions around the world.
Not all Olympic athletes take part in the opening ceremony; many skip it for logistical reasons, such as having to compete the following day. James and the four-time defending gold medalist U.S. men don’t open Olympic play until Sunday, when they face Serbia at Lille, France.
James and the U.S. Olympians will be waiting longer than almost any other nation for their trip on the Seine. By IOC custom, Greece — which will have NBA star Giannis Antetokounmpo as one of its two flagbearers — will lead the procession, followed by the Refugee Olympic Team and then about 200 more national delegations. The U.S. is scheduled to go next-to-last in the procession, because Los Angeles will play host to the next Summer Games in 2028.
France, as the host, will be the final nation in the opening ceremony procession. Its men’s basketball team, featuring reigning NBA rookie of the year Victor Wembanyama, opens Olympic play on Saturday and isn’t expected to be present for the opening ceremony.
