Los Angeles Lakers superstar LeBron James has been the face of the NBA for nearly a decade and in being the face of the league he has received unwarranted criticism. There is not much to criticize about LeBron with him being an all-time great and a fantastic role model who gives back to his community, but people find a way.
Perhaps the biggest criticism LeBron has gotten throughout his career is for jumping teams to win championships. While he did do that and he did kickstart this player-empowerment era, he still never requested a trade like so many of these other stars. He always played out his deal.
The other big criticism that LeBron James gets is for how he sometimes flops during NBA games and will complain to the referees about foul decisions. Despite it being a widespread NBA trend, that did not stop fellow NBA player Jonas Valanciunas from savagely roasting LeBron for said acts in a recent game of charades.
https://twitter.com/kelwright/status/1549781784463826944
There were probably quicker ways to act out LeBron as so many NBA players do that exact same thing. He definitely would have gotten a quicker answer if he did LeBron’s signature chalk throw, but that is beside the point. Valanciunas wanted to poke fun at King James.
Jonas Valanciunas and LeBron James have an interesting history together.
Mocking LeBron James as a crybaby and a flopper was no accident by Valanciunas. He likely did so because of the history between himself and LeBron James when LeBron was on the Cleveland Cavaliers and Valanciunas was on the Toronto Raptors.
LeBron notoriously owns the Raptors in his NBA career and in a late-season matchup between the two teams Valanciunas tried to send some kind of message. LeBron drove to the rim late in the third quarter and drove past Valanciunas, who simply decided to wrap up LeBron like it was a game of football and tackle him to the floor.
LeBron swiped Valanciunas’s hand away when he tried to pick him up off the floor and had some interesting comments after the game about protecting himself as a player (h/t Bleacher Report).
"“Maybe I got to protect myself a little bit more, too. … I don’t want to get too much involved in it because I don’t want to cry about it, but it’s a lot of plays that are just not basketball plays. … And I’ve said it before, it’s just not basketball plays.”"
Valanciunas spun it as “protecting the rim” because that was his job but it is hard to say that it was not a dirty play. If LeBron did this to Brandon Ingram next season Valanciunas would be the first one in his face telling him to back off.
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That is probably the source material for Valanciunas mocking LeBron James and at the end of the day, LeBron is likely not losing sleep over it.