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LeBron James Calls Detroit Lions' Jeff Okudah 'A Great Young Man'

The Detroit Lions selected Okudah as the No. 3 overall pick in the NFL draft.
Melissa Rohlin|
LeBron James Calls Detroit Lions' Jeff Okudah 'A Great Young Man'
LeBron James Calls Detroit Lions' Jeff Okudah 'A Great Young Man'

Thursday was quite a day for Jeff Okudah. 

In anticipation of the NFL draft, Okudah tweeted, "My dreams come true today." Okudah, who played for Ohio State, then got a nod from one of the greatest basketball players of all time, LeBron James, who is an Akron native and Buckeyes fans. 

"I’m saying CONGRATULATIONS right now lil bro!!" James tweeted. "Whoever draft you is getting a straight up DOG but more importantly a great young man! #YoungKing."

Okudah went on to be selected by the Detroit Lions as the third overall pick. He didn't have an easy road to success. Less than a week after he came to Ohio State, his mother, Marie Okudah, died of lymphoma.  

"She was my best friend," Okudah said in a video interview with the NFL. "I know of had to lock in and realize I'm here for a reason and that my mom wouldn't want me to let my family down. So I kind of had tunnel vision of what I wanted to accomplish."

Okudah retweeted James' message to him. 

James, a three-time NBA champion and a four-time MVP, was a football star himself back in the day. He was the No. 1 football prospect in the state of Ohio when he played at St. Vincent–St. Mary High School. His junior year, he caught 60 passes for 1,200 yards and 16 touchdowns as a wide receiver. 

He recently posted an old newspaper clip about him as a football player and wrote that he didn't even play his senior year because his friends wouldn't let him. They wanted him to focus on basketball. 

"They said if I tried to step on a football field my senior year they would jump(kick my a**) me every day of practice until I had enough!" James wrote in an Instagram post. "Think I made a smart decision! Ha! Anyways you LB/CB/S can thank my homies I stayed over in the hoops lane or would have been plenty of highlights “Moss’d” on y’all."

Urban Meyer, who was the wide receivers coach at Notre Dame when James was in high school, offered James a scholarship as a sophomore.

Meyer said James' high school coach then laughed at him. 

"He said, ‘Do you know who that is?’ and I said, ‘No’ and he said, ‘LeBron James’ and I said, ‘Who’s LeBron James?’ and he said, ‘He’ll be the next Michael Jordan’ and I go, ‘Come on,’” Meyer told reporters in 2012. 

Meyer, who was the Buckeyes' head coach from 2011 through 2019, added that if James had picked football, he thinks he would've had similar success. 

“A first-round draft pick, a Hall of Famer,” Meyer said. “Obviously he’s a winner.”

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Melissa Rohlin
MELISSA ROHLIN

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