Doug Gottlieb is not letting LeBron James get the last word on him.
The Los Angeles Lakers star James made headlines over the long weekend with his petty post aimed at the longtime sports radio host Gottlieb, who also now serves as the head basketball coach at the University of Wisconsin–Green Bay. Gottlieb has had an absolutely abysmal first season in Green Bay, posting a 3-24 record and recently going through a three-month stretch without a single win.
In a post to his X page on Monday, James laughed at Gottlieb over his poor coaching performance.
While calling in to FOX Sports this week, Gottlieb returned fire at James and called out the four-time NBA champion for “punching down.”
“I don’t think it speaks well for somebody who, like, don’t you have the day off?” said Gottlieb of James, per Awful Announcing. “Don’t you have better things to do? My response is: Colin [Cowherd] told me a long time ago, ‘Don’t punch down. Always punch up.’ So me talking trash to him would technically be punching up. And [for] him, it’s punching down.
“So I don’t know. I guess pettiness and insecurity aren’t limited to just people who aren’t super successful in their field,” Gottlieb added. “I guess that would be my response. It just doesn’t make any sense. Why on a Presidents’ Day Monday, when you have the day off, are you worried about me? I’m not really sure.”
The context here is that Gottlieb, like many other sports pundits, has been openly critical of James for pigeonholing his son Bronny into an NBA roster spot with the Lakers. Over the last year or so, Gottlieb has called James a “bad basketball parent” and has even expressed skepticism that Bronny could hypothetically start for Gottlieb’s Horizon League team in Green Bay (you can read more about Gottlieb’s criticisms here).
That said though, Gottlieb is right that James should (presumably) have much better things to do than to take petty swipes at him on X dot com. In choosing to engage with Gottlieb’s comments, James actually gave them far more legitimacy and publicity than they otherwise would have gotten if he had just left them alone in the first place.
