LeBron James' list of favorite Denzel Washington movies is objectively terrible

Denzel Washington recently lectured the Los Angeles Lakers as part of the team’s “Genius Series” — a sequence of accomplished guest speakers that also recently included Dwayne Johnson — so LeBron James was asked to list his three favorite movies from the two-time Academy Award-winning actor.

LeBron responded by naming his two favorite — “Man on Fire” and “He Got Game” — and then sandwiched a pair of “I don’t knows” around “Remember the Titans” and “John Q,” before being reminded that he forgot to mention “Training Day,” the movie for which Washington won Best Actor.

“Who could forget about him? Alonzo. Of course,” said James. “So, there’s so many. So many.”

Hey, it is not easy to rattle off a top-three list when put on the spot, although it might be a little easier for a guy who answers questions in front of cameras on the daily and who informed us long ago, “I’m lucky to have a photographic memory, and to have learned how to work with it.” We learned that this skill may not apply to movies before, as LeBron could not regurgitate his favorite “Godfather” quote after informing reporters that he had watched the movie trilogy six times during the 2016 postseason.

Listen, you can’t criticize a guy’s favorite movies, because that’s just like, uh, your opinion, man. Sure, it might be wildly cliche for an athlete to have two of Washington’s few sports movies ranked among his top four (while somehow leaving “The Hurricane” off the list), and no self-respecting Denzel fan should have “John Q” anywhere near the top of his rankings, but LeBron is entitled to his favorites.

LeBron’s list did not include any of the eight movies for which Washington was nominated for an Oscar, including his Best Supporting Actor win for “Glory.” That’s fine. He seems to like sports and action movies, which eliminates “Philadelphia,” “Malcolm X,” “Mo’ Better Blues,” “Flight,” “Fences” and a host of other exceptional movies. That’s OK. Just like it’s OK for him to like “Man on Fire” and “John Q” over better thrillers like “Inside Man” and “Crimson Tide.” LeBron is free to be his own worst critic.

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Ben Rohrbach is a staff writer for Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at rohrbach_ben@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter! Follow @brohrbach

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