Illustration by Ved Patel

On Tuesday night, I was halfway into my pre-bedtime shower when my roommate released a guttural yelp from the safety of his bedroom — it sounded like he was mortally wounded. As anyone who has been scared in the shower can attest, I did the normal thing: I flinched and slipped, crashing into the floor. 

In pain of my own, I managed to grab my phone and text my assailant, “that better have been a roach or something dude…i just slipped and fell.” 

I received a reply in mere seconds: a photograph of Lebron James and an apology: “Sorry. All time scoring leader.”

I texted back: “you better have a woman in there. if you dont, dont bother coming home tmrw.”

You see, I’m not a particularly religious person, but I do have strong faith in one thing: a Reddit basketball theory I saw when I was in high school.

On April 5, 1984, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar snatched the mantle of NBA all-time scoring leader from Wilt Chamberlain. 38.5 weeks later, LeBron James was born.

Let’s take this back a step. The typical pregnancy takes 36-40 weeks between conception and birth, making it reasonably likely that LeBron was conceived within a narrow window of time around Kareem’s big night.

The abstraction of this is that LeBron was destined for greatness, considering the timing of his conception. As any logical and reasonable person (like myself) would tell you, the next basketball legend will be conceived sometime around when LeBron usurps the NBA all-time high scorer title from Kareem.

That night was Tuesday, Feb. 7. 

This is my suggestion to you, dear reader: if you believe in a god (of basketball) pray to them, and remember that the coming days are your best shot to create LeBron 2: A LeBaby of Your Own. Godspeed.