LeBron James’ Sportsperson of The Year speech Will Make You Cry
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LeBron James accepted Sports Illustrated’s 2016 Sportsperson of the Year Award Monday night in typical LeBron fashion, with a moving speech that will bring tears to the eyes of just about everyone with a heart.
“This award is not for me,” LeBron said, after explaining that he doesn’t actually prep these speeches– he just makes them up on the spot and still sounds brilliant, because of course he does. “This award is for my wife, this award is for my mother, this award is for my three kids back home. This award is for my mother, for my mother-in-law, for my father-in-law, for my sister, for my Foundation and all 2,300 kids that I’ve got in my Foundation.”
“This award is for the great Muhammad Ali, for Bill Russell and for Jim Brown, for Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, because at the end of the day I’m not standing up here if you four gentlemen,” he continued. “Kareem, Jim Brown, Muhammad, Bill, sit at that table in the 1960’s and no matter, it wasn’t about you guys. It wasn’t about you guys. It was four dominant athletes at that time, didn’t care what happened to them. They sacrificed everything that could have happened to them, could have been stripped of everything that they’ve accomplished to that point. Can’t play football no more, can’t play basketball no more, can’t fight no more. But they’re calling and their reason for doing what they had to do was for a night like tonight that in 2016 in Brooklyn, New York, that we all could sit up here as African Americans, as white Americans, as Mexicans, as people from the Dominican Republic, Big Papi I see, Francisco I see you, Puerto Rico, that we all could sit in one room and just say wow. This is an unbelievable night in not only sports but in life. So as I stand up here as a recipient of the 2016 Sportsmen of the year, this isn’t about me. This is much bigger than me.”
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source: cleveland19.com
