LeBron James and the Los Angeles Lakers will headline their NBA title race on Tuesday with their first-round playoff series against the Portland Trail Blazers – which will pit him against longtime friend and Banana Boat Crew member Carmelo Anthony.
Before that begins, however, James was asked Monday about a horrific incident the two went through on a vacation they took several years ago in the Bahamas.
James saved Anthony’s life
Anthony and James, along with former Miami Heat star Dwyane Wade and Oklahoma City Thunder star Chris Paul and their families, were on vacation in the Bahamas a few years ago.
They had all jumped out of a boat and swam to a cave, though Anthony stayed back to watch barracudas, he first revealed on an Instagram live session with Wade earlier this year.
Carmelo Anthony and LeBron James will face off against each other in the playoffs for just the second time in their careers starting on Tuesday. (Jim McIsaac / Getty Images)
The current, he said, began to take him away from the boat and into the open ocean.
When the rest of the crew returned to the boat, Anthony was gone.
“I just knew he wasn’t in the boat with the rest of us, so I went out looking for him,” James told ESPN on Monday. ‘And by the grace of God and by strength and not afraid of the water, I was able to get him back to the boat. It was the only thing that bothered me at that point and time was to get my brother back to the boat. ‘
That was when James jumped into the water and came to the rescue.
“He brought me back with one arm,” Anthony said in March. ‘He swims with one arm and carries me with the other arm. … Yo, Source, I appreciate that. You saved my life that day. Those little flippers did not work for me. ”
The two, who both entered the league in 2003, have clearly gone beyond the incident and are focused on the upcoming series – which will mark just the second series between Anthony and James, and the first in eight years.
If that day had gone differently in the Atlantic Ocean, however, the series – and the NBA landscape as a whole – would undoubtedly look very, very different.
‘It’s a blessing, honestly. “I do not really know what to say to be honest,” James told ESPN. “I’m just glad he’s still here.”
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