LeBron James haters had a field day this past postseason. The King and his No. 3-seeded Lakers lost to the Timberwolves in the first round of the playoffs, marking yet another early exit in recent years for the Hall of Famer. And in the weeks that followed, it was reported that LeBron’s mind was already out of Los Angeles.
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There are talks about Bron wanting out of the Lakers, despite accepting his $52 million player option. And that’s because he knows the franchise is building for the future. LeBron, at 40, has a couple of seasons left to play at an elite level and wants one final run at ring number five.
However, Skip Bayless, LeBron’s forever critic, has refused to buy into the narrative. He took some shots at the NBA icon on the latest edition of his podcast. The analyst felt that with James, there has always been some sort of justification whenever he loses. That said, the way Skip criticized him might raise a few eyebrows.
“With LeBron, there’s always some juicy backstory,” said Bayless, which was only the opening line to his latest rant about the 21-time All-Star.
“You want out because the Lakers failed and betrayed you. Love it. Drive it! Send your media minions to run to their keyboards to spread your propaganda, your fake news. As I’ve long said, GOAT LeBron has always needed a scapegoat. This time… It’s Rob Pelinka,” added Bayless.
The analyst then dug out his notebook of LeBron failures to smear The King’s image once again. He even pulled out a Vegas odds statistic to support his claim. The stat? The Purple and Gold were favored to beat the Wolves, but ended up losing in a gentleman’s sweep.
“Wait, Bron… Your Lakers had the second-best odds in the West to win the West. Your Lakers were strongly favored to beat Minnesota but lost in five because you, GOAT, went 27 straight 4th quarter minutes over Games 3, 4, and 5 without scoring a single point,” said Bayless.
Skip then implied that James manipulated the media to cover up his playoff “failure”, a move that got him more attention than Kevin Durant getting traded to the Houston Rockets.
“But you, LeCon, have buried all that dead true negativity under an avalanche of, ‘Where is LeBron going now?’ You’ve again become the story of the summer, even bigger than Kevin Durant going to Houston,” Bayless screamed.
“I am in awe of what you have masterminded post flame out,” he added. “You phony GOAT are the king of Phony Baloney, and I for one, LeCon, will not swallow a single bite of it.”
The analyst then took a big breath and sipped on his soda, as if he had just accomplished something magnificent. But he was not done.
Bayless, who has been targeting LeBron all summer, went on to “update” his all-time NBA top 10 rankings. He had LeBron at number nine and even considered demoting him to 10th, behind Wilt Chamberlain, but smugly decided to “give him a break”.
In his list, LeBron, arguably the GOAT in the eyes of many, was ranked behind Bill Russell, Tim Duncan, Larry Bird, Kobe Bryant, and Magic Johnson, to name a few. It almost felt like Bayless was begging for a response from LeBron.
But the issue with Bayless throwing all of this at James is that he’s picking a fight with someone who doesn’t care about him. Skip, like most analysts, is known to bait listeners with controversial takes to attract engagement.
That’s not to say everyone needs to love or idolize LeBron. But there’s a clear difference between offering fair, informed criticism of an athlete’s performance and being so obsessed with inserting yourself into the narrative that you start spewing nonsense at every opportunity.
As for James, he is still a Laker and is going to do his absolute best to bring the storied franchise back to the postseason. The addition of DeAndre Ayton will certainly help.
Then again, James could go 82-0, win his fifth ring, and you’d still have Skip coming up with un-clever nicknames like “LeCon.”
