LeBron James brought us our first viral video of the NBA season on Saturday when he seemingly set a screen on one of his own teammates during his first preseason game with the Cleveland Cavaliers. Ironically enough, the Cavs were playing the Miami Heat. This led to a bunch of jokes about LeBron forgetting what team he was playing for.
The key word there is “jokes.” Most — if not all — of us knew LeBron didn’t actually think he was still playing for the Heat. But King James seemed annoyed.
“For non-basketball people, our coverage is for me to show and for [Matt Dellavedova] to go under me and we just didn’t get the call right at the time,” LeBron said Wednesday, via ESPN.com’s Dave McMenamin. “Delly was supposed to slide under me and we kind of ran into each other.
“So, for non-basketball people, they like to critique everything that I do. It’s stupid.”
I don’t know if LeBron would consider me a “basketball person,” but I knew the screen was the result of a simple miscommunication. That didn’t make it any less ironic and hilarious. Had it not been so entertaining, Dellavedova’s family probably wouldn’t have sent him the clip.
“My family sent me the link of it,” Dellavedova said. “He just showed out [on the ball handler] and I just needed to go under. So, it wasn’t really anything. I mean, you know how the media can get, right? It’s obviously more crazy with anything involving LeBron.”
It seems like LeBron and Dellavedova are looking at this like another instance of the media being critical of LeBron, but I don’t think that’s the case. There’s a difference between poking fun and criticizing.
