Coco Gauff and LeBron James Put Each Other’s Careers and Ages Into Perspective

Stephen Douglas | Jul 24, 2024

James on the bench at his first Olympics in 2004. / Robert Deutsch, USAT

LeBron James and Coco Gauff will the flag bearers for Team USA at Paris Olympics opening ceremony on Friday. Both athletes were surprised by the honor earlier this week, but their connections go much further back.

James and Gauff's career are both decades apart and somehow now running simultaneously. Leading Team USA into the opening ceremonies together should put Gauff's early triumphs and James's sustained success in perspective. At the most simple level, they are both teenage phenoms who became world famous athletes known widely by just their first names. There's a certain poetry to the fact that Coco has been alive almost as long as LeBron has been in the NBA.

At the Olympics, this kind of thing happens. Team USA would be in a similar situation if Diana Taurasi, 42, or rower Meghan Musnicki, 41, had been chosen to be a flag bearer alongside 16-year old track star Quincy Wilson. But the way that Gauff and James's timelines match up, it's kind of amusing.

On January 13, 2001, the night that Coco Gauff's parents, Corey and Candi, got married, LeBron James scored 33 points in a loss to Virginia's Oak Hill Academy. A year later, when Akron St. Vincent-St. Mary met Oak Hill again, LeBron faced Carmelo Anthony for the first time.

When Gauff was born a few years later, on March 13, 2004, LeBron was a rookie with the Cleveland Cavaliers. The night after Gauff was born James scored 26 points in a win over the Indiana Pacers (TNT's Reggie MIller played in that game). Gauff wasn't even crawling by the time he made his Olympic debut that summer.

While James was 19 when he made his NBA debut, Gauff was just 14 when she made her ITF debut. By the time she beat Venus Williams at Wimbledon in 2019 as a 15-year old, James was 35 and coming off a rough season. Injury problems kept him out of 27 games and his Los Angeles Lakers went 37-45. It looked like James's age might finally be catching up with him.

Instead, LeBron made All-NBA teams every season since and won another title in 2020. During the middle of that COVID-19-affected season, James had 15 points and 13 assists in a loss to the Boston Celtics. That same day Gauff beat Venus Williams again, this time at the Australian Open. Gauff reached the finals of the French Open in 2022 and won the US Open last year while James was preparing for his 21st season.

And now here we are. Neither showing any sign of slowing down anytime soon. Two different generations of athlete coming together to represent their country. The Olympic spirit and the American dream coming together for one moment neither athlete will ever forget. It just took one of them a lot longer to get there.