Everything LeBron James’ parenting moment reminded me of

I saw the video of LeBron cheering up his son, and it got me thinking about being a parent.

So I saw a clip of LeBron James talking to his son after a game, and tweeted about it. Because everyone isn’t on Twitter, I strung them all together here and added some parts I thought needed adding.

There are a few reasons to like this other than the one I chose, such as LeBron displaying how his basketball computer of a brain doesn’t even stop working during children’s games, or him striking a fine balance between being super-interested and yet not overly intense in coaching.

I particularly like this subtext: That not only will his son have to accept the analysis because his father, after all, is LeBron James, but that he won’t because ... well, he’s Dad, and no child can ever believe 100 percent of what Dad says. It’s not possible, not even if Dad is LeBron James.

No matter how right LeBron might be, Bryce James is probably thinking: You’re just saying that to make me feel better, and I know that. Because kids get parented, but they also watch you parent them at the same time. Those are different things, and yet they happen at the same time because kids are 3,000 times more perceptive than you think they are (or might want them to be.)

I’m also pleased by LeBron’s comfort in living the hair plugs/transplant/whatever he’s got lifestyle. Like Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp, he’s living his truth in public, and clearly believes the results are pretty cool.

That is a link to a really good Eli Saslow story on James. LeBron has a strange rep for alternately a.) controlling his own image and using a close circle of advisers to make decisions about access, and b.) being willing to tell his story in public on terms not always favorable to him.

There is truth to both of these angles. Among megastars of this era with long, productive careers and a lot of money on the line, James is downright vocal.

Compare him to his few male global peers here. Lionel Messi, soccer’s greatest player No. 1, is a cipher. Tom Brady sells infrared recovery pajamas and a $350 cookbook, and this is what will have to pass for insight into his personal life. Roger Federer hangs out in Switzerland with his perfect family in his perfect house in clothes monogrammed with his initials. When the fire rises to consume humanity whole, he will walk out from the flames without a single scorch mark.

It’s not an obligation for an athlete to be anything publicly. People have a right to be private. Sometimes they don’t get that choice — see the entire second half of Tiger Woods’ career — but even that can be managed to a fine obscurity.

LeBron has mostly made the choice to tell a story. That’s more than he had to do, and more than most people in his position would.

I think LeBron lets his story be known because he thinks it serves a larger purpose.

Read that Saslow story or any other story about his upbringing. There are two things that come through in every telling. The first is that of a very young child who did not have a stable childhood. The second is of a kid who found mentoring, comfort, and care through 1.) a struggling but devoted mother and 2.) the coaches and mentors who brought him into their homes.

If that story keeps coming back to me, it’s because I have kids now and got to be raised by two parents in a stable home. One of those parents, my dad, didn’t really have a great blueprint for that, or at least what anyone would call the dictionary standard. He made it work in his own way, just like a hundred million other mothers and fathers.

People do this every day. They do a job they have either never seen done before or have seen done under disastrous or chaotic circumstances, and they somehow do it well. Sometimes they do it flat brilliantly.

Periodically they fail, too. Parenting is a series of failures, an endless chain of them, and the worst part is how sometimes you know they know. It’s right there in your child’s face, like when you’re lost, and your phone is dead, and the kid has to pee, and there’s no obvious place on this stretch of road for them to pee except in the woods, and my god, wouldn’t you kill for even one dirty McDonald’s bathroom right now.

Sometimes, even at a very young age, children will look at you from the corner of their eye and think that maybe, just maybe, you’re not the person for this job. I know they do, because I remember doing the same thing despite being unable to drive, earn a living, fix eggs, or balance a bank account.*

* I’ve learned to do at least two of these. SUCCESS.

Parenting in the best of situations is about flying partially blind. For someone who grew up in difficult circumstances, it’s even harder. For someone like LeBron, it means having to do at least a little bit of that in public as well.

He’s choosing to do more than a little bit of that here. He’s mic’d up in this clip, which everyone heard and saw because he published it on his Instagram page for his small, intimate following of 45.7 million.

If you point this out like it means something bad: Go ahead. Being cynical would be a totally fine play. I can’t stop you from doing that. It would be your decision, one backed up by literally almost any other heartwarming moment ever seen on the internet.

If you acknowledge that James is being recorded here and still think it’s a great moment, come on over and join me. More than any other athlete of my lifetime, James knows he’s being watched, in the good and bad senses. Despite that, he works in the spotlight, and is willing to try and be an example. He does that in little cosmetic senses like this, and also in big, tangible ways.

There is one step further here. James is even willing to do that not just for kids, which is typically the easier sell, but for adults — even adults who have also signed up to be parents despite chaotic upbringings, or just parents period. You know we need that, right, even in the middle of the job? That it helps to see good examples of parenting, even if they’re in an obviously recorded moment from a celebrity’s life? That putting that moment on display matters beyond a moment of marketing? That in a historical moment where cruelty has been confused for leadership, this is actually leading?

That’s rare. LeBron James is rare in a lot of ways, and keeps getting rarer by the day, because I really do — even through the veil of celebrity PR and presentation — think he’s trying to pay back kindness in a public fashion. Find someone else trying to do that at the same level, and I’ll wait right here. It will be a minute.

P.S. His basketball brain has to be the most terrifyingly detailed place. James probably has the basketball scenes from Space Jam blocked out in his head in detail and can explain why one particular Monstar’s poor spacing allowed Michael Jordan to get the ball on a crucial late dunk.