LeBron James has spent more than two decades creating personalized handshakes for teammates across the NBA. Some last only a few seconds, while others are elaborate routines unique to a single player. Somehow, he remembers all of them.

The tradition began during his first stint with the Cleveland Cavaliers and has followed him through Miami, back to Cleveland, and now Los Angeles. Speaking with Steve Nash on Mind The Game, James finally shed light on how he comes up with the handshakes and why he can still remember routines dating back to the late 2000s.

“I have no f***ing idea. I have no idea. Some of the handshakes are like I kind of try to learn my teammates over the course of time. Early on, I’ll kind of like what they’re into, what they like, things of that nature,” LeBron shared. “Though right now, my teammate Dalton Knecht, we have a handshake where we kind of dab up, and then at the end we kind of throw like a bow and arrow. I kind of got that because of how well he shoots the ball.”

One example is Dalton Knecht’s bow-and-arrow celebration. After watching the rookie erupt for 37 points and knock down nine three-pointers against the Utah Jazz in November 2024, James incorporated the gesture into their personalized handshake.

“Last year, when he was a rookie, I think one game he had like 30 something in one of our games, and I was just like, he f***ing flamethrower,” the 41-year-old explained to Steve Nash.

“Not at all. But also some of them are just off the top of the head. I’ve been doing it for so long, I don’t even know, man,” LeBron further shared.

“It’s just weird that I can remember a lot of these,” LeBron admitted. Nash then posed an obvious follow-up: Could James still remember the routines from 2008? “Yeah, it’s weird. It’s a lot of… It’s time-consuming; it’s very time-consuming. I need to stop,” LeBron James confessed.

The explanation also offers a glimpse into a trait teammates have praised throughout his career. Long before discussions about handshakes, James had earned a reputation for recalling plays, scouting reports, and game situations years after they happened. That same attention to detail appears to extend beyond basketball strategy, helping him retain personalized routines for teammates across multiple franchises.

The tradition traces back to James’ first stint in Cleveland. He has previously explained that it started with teammate Damon Jones before gradually spreading throughout the locker room. What began as a single pregame ritual eventually evolved into a trademark routine involving virtually every teammate he played alongside.

By the late 2000s, the ritual had become a recognizable part of Cleveland’s pregame routine. James worked his way down the bench exchanging a different sequence with each teammate, turning a simple greeting into one of the league’s most recognizable traditions.

Some of the routines stretched close to ten seconds, requiring precise timing and multiple movements. Yet James rarely appeared to hesitate, even as the collection continued to grow across stops in Cleveland, Miami, and Los Angeles.

Why is LeBron James’ handshake significant in the NBA?

What separates James’ tradition from most pregame rituals is its scale. While many NBA players have signature greetings, few maintain individualized routines for nearly every teammate over the course of multiple decades and franchises.

“Nah, nah. You don’t forget. You don’t forget,” he told the media back in 2015. “Everybody has their own distinctive handshake… You do it every day. Once you get it down, it becomes like brushing your teeth every day.”

The consistency extends beyond active teammates. James has continued performing some of the routines with former teammates years after they stopped sharing a locker room, suggesting the tradition was never just a pregame spectacle. For many players, it became a small but lasting symbol of relationships built over the course of a season.

For many teammates, the handshakes were about more than entertainment. Former Cavs teammate James Jones viewed them as a simple way to strengthen relationships within the locker room.

“Sometimes you have to make sure that when you’re working, it has to be fun. You’re out here competing against the best in the world. You should enjoy it. It strikes a balance between being extremely tense and focused, but also something that you can sit back and enjoy,” he said.

Tristan Thompson offered another glimpse into how organically the rituals developed, revealing that some were created shortly before opening night. Rather than carefully planned productions, many emerged naturally as teammates looked for ways to build familiarity and camaraderie.

James may now joke that the tradition has become time-consuming, but its longevity tells a different story. More than two decades after the first routine emerged in Cleveland, he can still recall handshakes dating back to the late 2000s. What began as a simple exchange with a teammate has evolved into one of the NBA’s most enduring rituals, offering a small but revealing glimpse into the attention to detail and relationship-building that have defined his career.