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If you’re familiar with Michael Jordan’s career or are simply a huge fan of Space Jam, you know that he swapped basketball for baseball when he temporarily retired in 1993 because he’d lost his love for the game (which may or may not be a euphemism for “he was unofficially suspended for gambling“). He only spent a year in the minor leagues, where he fared about as well as Tim Tebow has so far.
Had Jordan never returned to basketball, there would have been a chilling butterfly effect where talking heads peddling hot takes wouldn’t be able to constantly argue about whether or not LeBron James is the best player of all time. The Cavalier was a multisport athlete in high school but ultimately decided to go down the basketball path, which has turned out pretty well for him so far.
Pittsburgh Steeler JuJu Smith-Schuster recently tried to convince LeBron to defect to the NFL, and while James said he’s perfectly happy with playing basketball, that hasn’t stopped one other team from trying to lure him away.
Yahoo Sports shared a tweet sent out by the Lehigh Valley IronPigs (the minor league affiliate of the Philadelphia Phillies) urging LeBron to ditch the NBA for AAA for a fairly compelling reason.
Our Pitch:
If @KingJames really wants to catch MJ, he needs to spend a season in Minor League Baseball.
Choose the IronPigs this summer.#LVWantsLeBron pic.twitter.com/voD2hxYT1I
— Lehigh Valley IronPigs (@IronPigs) May 10, 2018
Their (possibly flawed) logic is pretty simple: if James wants to truly measure up to MJ, he should pad his résumé with a stint in the minors. When you considered Jordan had a .202 batting average, he’d have to try pretty hard to be just as underwhelming.
This is just one of a few billboards urging James to join a certain team when he enters free agency after the season, including some that want LeBron to play in Philadelphia. Regardless of where he ends up, I assume it will have slightly more going on than Lehigh Valley does