“LeBron James acts too entitled and wouldn’t survive the ‘80s”: When Mychal Thompson firmly believed the Lakers superstar wouldn’t be the same if he played in the 1980s

Mychal Thompson once said that LeBron James would simply not be able to survive the 1980s and that he was much too entitled. 

The rivalry between LeBron James and the Golden State Warriors in the mid 2010s was very much real. So much so that family members from both parties were seemingly getting involved with Ayesha Curry throwing a couple jabs at James and the Cavaliers and Klay Thompson’s father, Mychal Thompson, joining in on that as well. 

When it comes to toughness and overall strength, LeBron James is perhaps second to none. It’s easy to look at the way he begs for fouls to the refs at certain points in a game and claim he wouldn’t have been the same dominant player in a previous era. However, it would be foolish to think that a tank-of-a-person like ‘The King’ wouldn’t have dominated even more so in the 1980s or 1970s.

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Lou Williams said it best when he said that dropping LeBron James in the 1970s or so would result in him winning 15 straight championships. An exaggerated statement but a point was made nonetheless. 

Mychal Thompson took shots at LeBron James during the 2016 NBA Finals. 

Mychal Thompson was a fairly successful player in the NBA during his 13 year career. Though he never made the All-Star team, he did end up winning two championships in the 80s. His son, Klay Thompson, would follow suit in the rings department and snag three of his own in the 2010s, all while going up against LeBron James. 

During the 2016 NBA Finals, tensions ran high between the Warriors and the Cavaliers and with the latter having a late series surge, Mychal took to social media. He said that, not only is LeBron James a bit too entitled, but would not have survived in the 80s.

Mychal Thompson: “LeBron (James) couldn’t have survived in the 80s with the physicality and the words guys said to each other back then.”

— Diamond Leung (@diamond83) June 13, 2016

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This of course, as mentioned above, doesn’t make much sense as a player of James’s caliber would have adapted to the times with ease and dominated the same. However, it is interesting to see that that Game 6 loss in 2016 prompted such a visceral response, not from a player, but a player’s father.