The Loop

LeBron James once GAINED seven pounds during a playoff game, says new urban legend

Cleveland Cavaliers v Chicago Bulls

Jonathan Daniel

It's a widely cited, loosely corroborated fact that NASCAR drives can lose up to ten pounds of water weight during a single race. Accurate or not, this anecdote raises some very real questions about A. why NASCAR races are held in places like Florida in July and B. how much water these guys are freaking drinking, but it has nothing on this little gem from ESPN's senior LeBron correspondent Brian Windhorst:

LeBron James once gained seven pounds during an Eastern Conference Finals game.

To be honest we're not sure we believe it either. LeBron is a made-in-a-lab level physical freak (term of endearment). He's Kobe Bryant trapped in Lawrence Taylor's body and we'd literally rather get hit by an Amtrak on the fastbreak than him. That said, gaining seven pounds during a real live NBA game and with a real live NBA Finals berth on the line seems unbelievable even by LeBron's routinely unbelievable standard. According to Windhorst, however, who dropped this instant viral headline as an aside in a larger piece about LeBron putting his back issues behind him, it's as real as the curvature of the earth (apparently still a topic of debate in NBA circles):

Some Miami Heat teammates saw the scale and attest to it in amazement. James himself just shrugs and calls it "weird as hell." The truly wild part is that it was from 271 pounds to 278 pounds, though James is much lighter these days.

"The truly wild part," Windhorst? Come on. The craziest part of the Predator aren't the dreds, man. It's that it's the freaking Predator.