I’m Letting My Kids Stay Up Late to Watch LeBron James (Jason Gay, WSJ)
If you run into my children in the next few weeks, a warning: they might be a nightmare. I mean, more of a nightmare than they usually are. They might be especially cranky and tired, demanding cheese sticks and juice boxes. They might wind up on the floor, kicking and howling, like an adult at the Apple Genius Bar.
It’s not their fault. It’s mine.
I’ve been letting them stay up late to watch LeBron.
My children are 5 and 3. They are not sports fans. They are children. They would much prefer to watch a crocodile wrestle a boa constrictor. Or a volcano eruption. Or “Octonauts.”
But for the past few weeks, we’ve fallen into a routine whenever the Cleveland Cavaliers have an evening playoff game. The children do their normal child-schtick of wandering out of their bedrooms after bedtime, complaining they can’t sleep. This is a lie.
They ask if they can sit on the couch and watch a little TV.
I should say no, because they really need to go to bed. But I say yes, because LeBron James is playing basketball—and I want my children to have watched LeBron James play basketball, when he was still in his prime.
I know it sounds corny, but I think this is important. It’s pretty obvious by now that James is one of the greatest basketball players of all time. When he finally wraps his career, he may have a case alongside Michael Jordan as the greatest ever, and I want my children, when they’re 35 or 62—or 147, living on Mars with their own great-great-great-grandkids, and Elon Musk and Tom Brady —to be able to say: Yeah, I saw LeBron James play.
I think this is the kind of thing I’m supposed to do as a parent. Sure: I’m supposed to teach them to brush their teeth, tie their shoes, drive a stick shift and make an Old-Fashioned the proper way, with a muddler and real sugar and not some garbage simple syrup. But I also think it’s essential that when something miraculous is happening in sports, you make sure that your kids see it.
. Last thing they’d worry about.
