Celebrini, Smith on the origin of their viral, LeBron-inspired TikTok

Macklin Celebrini and Will Smith are surprised at how much their TikTok team has blown up.

On Thursday, Smith posted a TikTok recreating a viral video of LeBron James.

Macklin Celebrini and Will Smith are taking over San Jose and now TikTok – they recreated the viral LeBron driveway video 🤣

(via willcpsmith/TT) pic.twitter.com/mlseCHl4WG

— B/R Open Ice (@BR_OpenIce) December 26, 2024

As of Saturday afternoon, the number has reached 700,000 views and is rising.

“We were bored. It was a day off. We played basketball for three hours, so it was fun,” Smith said.

“We started joking about it: ‘Have you seen that TikTok?’ We just decided to recreate it,” Celebrini said. “It wasn’t very good.”

Celebrini is of course closely linked to basketball. His father, Rick Celebrini, is the director of sports medicine and performance for the Golden State Warriors. Because of this connection, the San Jose Sharks star rookie is friends with Warriors star Draymond Green.

However, Celebrini said he hasn’t heard from Green about his video.

Both said their San Jose Sharks teammates found the video “funny.”

The normally competitive young talents, perhaps surprisingly, didn’t have much to say about who was the better basketball player among them.

“None of us, actually,” Celebrini said.

“We had a lot of games. We had a huge series,” Smith said.

They also, in the best basketball style, judged each other over who was the better player.

“He had the harder lines,” Smith said. “I would say him.”

“Probably him,” Celebrini deflected.

They’ve also been cautious about potentially involving landlords and San Jose Sharks legends Joe Thornton and Patrick Marleau in future collaborations. Celebrini lives with Thornton; Smith lives with Marleau.

“I don’t know. I don’t want to push it too far,” Smith laughed. “But we’ll see.”

Either way, kids will be kids, unless you’re the first overall pick in the 2024 draft and the fourth overall pick in the 2023 draft, your TikToks go viral.

“We just had fun,” said Celebrini. “We did it like it was three weeks ago, like it wasn’t even like yesterday or whatever. Will said maybe I’ll post it and see what happens.”

“I felt like it was going to explode,” Smith said. “I didn’t think it would be that much.”