I’ve Had It Up to Here with LeBron James!

As of this writing, he has scored 35,787 points and collected 9,849 rebounds for the Cleveland Cavaliers, the Miami Heat, the Cavs again and the Los Angeles Lakers; won four titles (two in Miami, one in Cleveland and one in LA); been on the cover of Sports Illustrated alone or with others 31 times; won two Olympic gold medals; made 17 appearances in the NBA All-Star Game; been named the league’s MVP between four and seven times, depending on who is making the choices; and amassed a fortune of around $1 billion ($111 million in on- and off-court earnings in 2021 alone).

LeBron James, whom I consider one of the top five basketball players of all time—the others being, in alphabetical order, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Kobe Bryant, Julius Erving and Michael Jordan—has been praised up one side and down the other. His skills as a hoopster are undeniable, but this 6′ 8″, 250-pound bruiser is not perfect. Please, do not count me among James’ many haters, although they are legion. (They say he flops, complains to refs when he doesn’t get every call, sometimes leaves games when his team is getting blown out, is the biggest prima donna in all of sports and wants to be treated like a Nobel Prize winner even though he has trouble constructing a full sentence in proper English.) I respect him and loathe him in equal parts. But he annoys me more and more all the time.

I suppose it began 11 years ago, in the summer of 2010. I refer, of course, to “The Decision.” James, a free agent, was to announce whether he would stay with the Cavs or move to a sexier franchise. Acting like it was such a profound moment, he paused, trembled and said, “I’m taking my talents to South Beach.” Most of his media sycophants ate it up. I did not.

On October 4, 2019, Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey sent out a Tweet: “Fight for freedom, stand with Hong Kong.” This created a firestorm because it jeopardized relations between China and the NBA. James, who has lucrative ties with China because of his Nike endorsements, waded in. He said that Morey—possessor of a bachelor’s degree in computer science from Northwestern and a master’s in business administration from MIT—was “either misinformed or not really educated on the situation.” James’ formal education, I will tell you, ended when he received a diploma from St. Vincent-St. Mary High School in Akron. The hypocrisy displayed in his statement was breathtaking, and he absorbed some serious criticism as a result. Nevertheless, NBA–China relations were smoothed over; the Rockets announced barely one year later that Morey was “stepping down” from his job with the team.

Those brave protesters in Hong Kong were calling for freedom of speech, a concept so deeply embedded in American law and culture that it is taken for granted. They were also pointing to the lack of social justice in China. Few people have been more vocal about social justice in the last few years than James, who is totally given over to the Only Black Lives Matter movement. He was among those who insisted that OBLM messages be prominently placed on NBA courts and on the backs of players’ jerseys—they were merely using their “platform,” he assured us. He has knelt before many a basketball game and behaved derisively during the playing of the national anthem.

James uses the broadest of brushes when speaking of White people and most of all White policemen. Oh, how he loves playing the victim. James clings to, revels in, his victim status. Want an example? A line from a recent Tweet read, “We’re literally hunted EVERYDAY/EVERYTIME [sic] we step foot outside the comfort of our homes!” (LBJ lives in a $23 million mansion in the Brentwood district of Los Angeles, so he’s not kidding about the comfort of his home.) He stubbornly refuses to acknowledge the 13/89 issue—that black people, his “community,” make up 13% of the U.S. population but commit 89% of the violent crimes. This being the case, who should be surprised that cops—whether White or black or any other color—devote an inordinate amount of their attention to the 13 percenters?

Further displeasing me is his adoption of the crossed-arms “Wakanda Forever” salute. This started with a 2018 superhero movie entitled Black Panther and has since been given further cultural meaning. Kids do it in school yards, White people do it to show they are hip, and woe to those who refuse. One woman (black and deriving from the Caribbean) on a New York educational board who thought it improper was canned.

I now draw your attention to two incidents that took place in LA’s 124-116 overtime defeat of the Indiana Pacers on November 24, 2020. It was, by the way, in Indianapolis. First, James (who finished with 39 points, 5 rebounds and 6 assists) got his feelings hurt when two White fans on the first row razzed him. I am not sure what was said, but perhaps they told him his father is a woman and his mother likes it. King James called over one of the refs and tattled on these people. A Pacers security man walked up, and sure enough the two were tossed. Since when do jocks—especially those from visiting teams—have the right to tell courtside fans to leave? The Lakers forward later sought to justify his action, but I was not buying. Both SI and ESPN downplayed the incident.

Toward the end of the game, James made a big 3-point shot. As he headed back up court, he grabbed his package. You know what I’m talking about—his manhood, the family jewels. The “big balls dance,” as it is called, did not originate with LeBron James. It appears to have started with a 1994 movie, Major League II, but at least four other NBA players have done it—Eddie House of the Heat, Sam Cassell of the Timberwolves, the Celtics, the Clippers and the Bucks (he also played for the Rockets, the Suns, the Mavericks and the Nets), Klay Thompson of the Warriors and Fred VanVleet of the Raptors. What they do varies, but it is always crude and certain to offend many fans. As those two courtside ejectees learned, James holds fans in low regard.

One of the few people on the planet whose opinion might carry weight with James is Abdul-Jabbar. He said in a video, “For me, winning is enough. Why do you have to do a stupid, childish dance and disrespect the other team? There is no point. GOATs [players touted as the greatest of all time] don’t dance.”

This indiscretion resulted in a $15,000 fine, which comes to .036 percent of his 2021 salary.