The Los Angeles Lakers lost the most important game of the entire season on Wednesday against the Los Angeles Clippers. With a win, the Lakers would have all but secured a spot in the top-six in the Western Conference and would not have had to deal with the NBA Play-In Tournament.
Instead, the Lake Show lost a game in which it was thoroughly outplayed throughout and now it seems all but guaranteed that the team will have to go through the play-in in order to qualify for the playoffs.
LeBron James blamed the scheduling for the loss as the team was coming off of a back-to-back and a long road trip. While that does hold some weight, it does not change the fact that the team did not show up in the most meaningful game of the season.
LeBron certainly did all he could with a monster second half but it was not enough. Even with his monster half, it was not good enough for some Lakers fans, with one fan, in particular, managing to get in a war of words with the NBA’s all-time leading scorer.
LeBron James appeared to get into a heated exchange with a fan late in the Lakers loss to the Clippers 😬
— ClutchPoints (@ClutchPoints) April 6, 2023
(via freethrowchick) pic.twitter.com/I4rISvsfv8
LeBron James’ argument with Lakers fan is a bad look for the fanbase.
The entire fanbase obviously is not like this but this fan having such a passionate argument with LeBron James is a bad look for fans. Like it or not, there is a pretty large contingent of Lakers fans that are anti-LeBron and there probably are some of them reading this article right now.
LeBron is not the most beloved player if he does not play for your favorite team and some LA fans already felt a certain way about him because of the LeBron vs Kobe Bryant debates that were popular in the late-2000s.
Some of that has carried over even with LeBron in the purple and gold, which is why he is often so quickly the scapegoat for anything that goes wrong in Los Angeles. While LeBron is far from perfect, these fans are ignoring the fact that he is the entire reason why LA has a 17th banner hanging.
It looks like this fan was making some kind of rings argument, which really does not make any sense. LeBron has won a championship in LA and was the main reason why the team snapped the longest postseason drought in franchise history.
Maybe this fan was trying to argue that LeBron does not have a fifth ring (hence the pinky point) but that is exactly what they should be rooting for LeBron to achieve! LeBron getting his fifth ring means LA moves into the all-time lead in championships over the Boston Celtics.
LeBron James has always had such a weird dynamic with fans of his own team and this is yet another example of that. Hopefully, the support is more uniform for him and his team once the NBA Playoffs roll around.