ATHLETE of the year LEBRON JAMES
December 17, 2020 · By SEAN GREGORY
ATHLETE of the year LEBRON JAMES
Who is the 2020 TIME Person of the Year? Find out Thursday night during the first-ever TIME Person of the Year broadcast special on NBC at 10 p.m. ET.
At 11:58 a.m. on June 8, LeBron James logged on to a video call from the living room of his Los Angeles–area home. As the clock hit noon, James, who abhors tardiness, took command of a virtual meeting that included more than 20 top athletes, entertainers and political pros. He set a serious tone: across the country, people were filling the streets to march against racial injustice and demand systemic change. What could this group do about it?
James had the answer, and it wasn’t another celebrity PSA: an all-star coalition committed to pushing back against the suppression of Black voters. To lay out the severity of the problem, Michigan secretary of state Jocelyn Benson detailed how disinformation campaigns attempt to lower turnout. Golden State Warriors forward Draymond Green expressed discomfort about encouraging others to be politically engaged since he himself had not voted since 2008. But such stories, he was assured, were exactly the point. Green’s experience could inspire others to vote for the first time, or return to the polls as he would. On a follow-up call 10 days later, comedian Kevin Hart asked if they would all be receiving Black Panther berets.
Portrait by Tyler Gordon for TIME
Hart was joking, but he spoke to the urgency with which James was approaching the cause. The moment required a movement, and LeBron James, the greatest basketball player of his generation—arguably of any generation—and one of the most prominent Black men in the world, would lead the way. “That was my initial call to action,” James tells TIME in late November, “to let people know what my mission was, what my passion was, and how we were going to deliver.”
On June 23, James launched the nonprofit More Than a Vote, with a single-minded focus on getting more people to the polls. The group pushed for sports arenas to be used as polling places on the grounds that they could allow for social distancing while accommodating large numbers of voters. In the hope of keeping lines moving and locations open, they recruited young people to replace older poll workers who were sidelined by fears of COVID-19. By August, nearly 50 athletes, entertainers and media figures—including WNBA player and ESPN host Chiney Ogwumike and NFL stars Patrick Mahomes and Odell Beckham Jr.—had signed on as founding members. The organization partnered with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund—and by Election Day, less than five months after its founding, had helped recruit more than 40,000 election workers nationally and in places like Atlanta, Milwaukee, Detroit and Philadelphia, all cities that helped deliver key swing states to Joe Biden.
