Before emerging as one of the NBA's brightest stars, Heat forward LeBron James was one of Ohio's most talented high school football players.
Now, with the 2011 NBA season in jeopardy, James is turning his attention back toward football — or at least that's what he's got his fans thinking.
Early Tuesday afternoon, less than one day after NBA commissioner David Stern announced that the first two weeks of the NBA season would be canceled, ESPN NFL analyst John Clayton sent out a tweet stating that the NFL trade deadline is next Tuesday.
About an hour later, James replied to Clayton's tweet with a follow-up question:
"When is the deadline for a team to sign a free agent?"
Clayton later responded to James, informing him that there is no deadline for teams to sign free agents, to which LeBron replied, "All good, Thanks Clayton!"
James' tweets — which came just a week after LeBron practiced in full pads with the football team at his former high school, St. Vincent-St. Mary, in Akron, Ohio — got the attention of his nearly 2.6 million followers, many of whom offered messages of support should the two-time NBA MVP and seven-time All-Star make the jump to the NFL.
It's not clear whether James' messages were a matter of professional interest or just an NFL fan's thirst for knowledge, but this isn't the first time James has publicly flirted with the idea that he could be an NFL player.
In early 2009, James was featured in a State Farm commercial in which he signed with the Cleveland Browns, and James later told reporters that he thought he could be an NFL-caliber tight end.
"If I put all my time and commitment into it, if I dedicated myself to the game of football, I could be really good," LeBron said at the time.
The remarks led to a response from then-Cleveland Browns coach Eric Mangini, who offered James a tryout of sorts.
"I think he should come on down," Mangini told reporters. "I know he's pretty busy right now, but if he wants to give it a shot, the guy is gifted. He's competitive and tough. I'm sure whatever he applied himself to, he'd probably be good in baseball or soccer or swimming."
Though he's known around the world as a basketball player, LeBron has quite the resume as a football star, too. After all, James was once a prep football standout and a first team All-Ohio wide receiver.
LeBron caught 42 passes for 752 yards and 11 touchdowns as a sophomore at St. Vincent-St. Mary's, and he had 57 receptions for 1,160 yards and 16 touchdowns as a junior before deciding to focus solely on basketball during his senior year.
The rest of the story, as they say, is history. Months after giving up football, James was taken No. 1 overall by the Cleveland Cavaliers in the 2003 NBA Draft.
At 6-foot-8 and 250 pounds, James is a physical specimen, and many have suggested that he could make the transition from basketball star to star tight end — much like Chargers TE Antonio Gates — should his interest in basketball wane.
However, the likelihood that James, whose lucrative NBA contract would not be protected in the event of a football injury, would ever follow through with his NFL talk is somewhere between slim and none.
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