LeBron James: How Walt Frazier’s comments about him affects the NBA
By Ronald Agers
LeBron James was criticized by Walt Frazier during Sunday’s game between the Los Angeles Lakers and New York Knicks. We dig into the comments and how it affects the basketball world.
Something funny happened on Sunday afternoon when LeBron James and the Los Angeles Lakers played my favorite team, the New York Knicks.
It was a game that meant absolutely nothing unless you had Zion Williamson on the brain. Any NBA team not playing on Saturday, April 14th, 2019 and beyond will be making offseason plans based around this one player.
The game lived up to its billing. It was notoriously boring (Ever doze out watching a game you should be covering? True story…that was me!), full of bad basketball and most NBA fans would forget as soon as the final buzzer sounded.
The funny thing that happened was history was made in this game! Not that the Knicks swept the Lakers in the season series or that LeBron James got his lunch handed to him with a stare down in the final seconds by Mario Hezonja.
https://twitter.com/BleacherReport/status/1107363178751709185
It wasn’t about LeBron James basically shooting the Lakers out of the game missing 11-of-15 shots in the fourth quarter, marking the worst shooting quarter in LeBron James’ career (To anyone who thinks this history…it’s not! Futility doesn’t count in my book!).
It wasn’t even the 13-1 collapse down the stretch that shows the complete embarrassment Lakers fans can’t even pin on Jim Buss or Mitch Kupchak.
It’s the one comment that an NBA Hall of Famer made that will change the landscape of not only the Los Angeles Lakers but the NBA and LeBron James.
The NBA love/hate civil war surrounding LeBron James has officially begun. Now LeBron James conversations will not be about his position on the Mount Rushmore of greats. The narrative is concerning if LeBron James a good enough Laker for the future. Then it conversation changes to who is the new face of the NBA.
Giannis Antetokounmpo, perhaps?
Walt Frazier made his opinion known while the camera was focusing on LeBron James sitting at the end of the bench during a timeout. This is nothing new due to the fact that Lake Show Life has shown so many instances of this practice that the site should have it’s own Instagram page.
I sat back the last couple of days and watched TV analysts go back and forth on Walt Frazier’s opinion and to be honest, some of the comments bordered on disrespect. At that point, I realized that this is going past the hardwood into the boardroom of certain media stations and NBA offices.
When I started writing for this website, I was asked by my mentors was I ready to deal with the backlash of criticizing the most powerful player in the NBA. I said yes.
But, now I understand how naive I was when I answered the question. I faced backlash from many LeBron fans and apologists at the beginning of the season. It wasn’t pretty and there were insults.
Walt Frazier basically echoed what I and some other brave writers stated about LeBron James all year long. The difference was the platform of what was said and who said it.
It’s one thing to hear a narrative from a writer on Lake Show Life, whose statements would be considered “hating”. It’s another thing to hear it from an NBA icon who is a Hall of Famer in front of potentially millions of fans on TV.
But to be clear here, Walt Frazier is absolutely right.
LeBron James does not care. If anyone had paid any attention to his actions up to this point, you would agree with him. But this is not about narratives. It’s about a corporate business plan that may have to change. Let’s go back to where all this started.