Patrick Mahomes may be younger than LeBron James and not nearly as rich but there is something that Mahomes beat James to. The 27-year-old NFL star, back during corona pandemic, attempted to get the Toronto Raptors to come to Kansas City. When the pandemic was affecting the entire sports industry, and travel between Canada and USA was shutting down, Mahomes was still hopeful of getting a basketball team to his town. His tweet to demand this visit paved the path for LeBron to make a much fancier demand. Unlike Patrick’s simple demand of letting Toronto make KC their home city during the pandemic, LBJ demanded the NBA bring a team to Las Vegas so that he could own that franchise.
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Bring them to KC! 💪🏽 https://t.co/di5r6bIAh7
— Patrick Mahomes II (@PatrickMahomes) October 26, 2020
Mahomes’ demand predated LeBron’s. And while they have slight differences, the nature of the demand is not that different. Both the players perhaps wanted to get their hands on some prime property.
Patrick Mahomes wanted Raptors in KC, LeBron James wanted to own Las Vegas’ potential NBA team
In 2020, even in October, the NBA season was still facing some major impending decisions. The world was on a halt and paranoia spread everywhere. Countries levied strict travel policies, some even going as far as banning any travel from certain countries.
Canada was one of the countries to do so. They closed their borders to the USA. This meant, if Toronto Raptors wanted to play in the NBA in the upcoming season, they needed a home city in the USA.
While the decision was still impending, Mahomes took to Twitter and urged the Raptors to camp in Kansas City. In fact, many political representatives from KC wrote to the NBA to get the Raptors to their home turf. CBS Sports reported on this in their article dated 2020.
Kansas City mayor Quinton Lucas, U.S. senators Roy Blunt, Pat Roberts and Jerry Moran, and U.S. representative Emanuel Cleaver, II wrote to NBA commissioner Adam Silver and Toronto Raptors ownership Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment about KC hosting the Raptors this season: pic.twitter.com/I146OWIggI
— Alec Lewis (@alec_lewis) October 27, 2020
The way Mahomes demanded this from the NBA really opened up the way for LeBron to also demand something from the NBA. King James, however, demanded that the league not only bring an expansion franchise to Las Vegas but made no attempts to hide his interest to buy the team.
As reported by NBA.com, while playing a preseason game in Las Vegas, James asked Commissioner Adam Silver to bring a team to the city. Before pre preseason game in question, James had confessed on his show “The Shop: Uninterrupted” that he wanted to own an NBA franchise in Las Vegas.
Both Mahomes and LeBron’s wishes haven’t been fulfilled
Sadly, despite the push from Kansas City, the Raptors decided to set up a season-long camp in Tampa, Florida. Tom Brady took the Raptors from Kansas City and the Super Bowl, how ironic.
In the case of LeBron James, though there are talks of expansion, no one knows when the expansion will come into effect. Vegas has been, for a while, one of the most anticipated spots for one of the expansion teams. While there is a possibility of this happening in the future, LeBron’s wish remains unfulfilled at the moment.
