LeBron James writes with his left hand, eats with his left hand and uses his dominant left hand for almost everything in his life—except his job.
He is a natural lefty and basketball righty.
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This may be the weirdest thing about having a hidden physical idiosyncrasy known as mixed-handedness: It’s actually not that weird if you work in the NBA.
About 8% of the league’s All-Stars over the last decade write with one hand and play with the other, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis based on examining photographs of NBA players signing autographs.
There’s a difference between mixed-handedness and the more common phenomenon of ambidexterity. While being truly ambidextrous means being equally skillful with both hands, almost everybody in the NBA is ambidextrous to some extent.
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Scholars believe that 1% of people are mixed-handed, which means they’re as likely to use their left hand and right hand, while roughly 10% are mixed-handed enough to perform some tasks with one and some with the other.
“I have no idea why I became a righty,” James said in 2017. “I just thought it looked cool—till I got older. Now I wish I were a lefty because those shots look a lot better.”
