An Open Letter To The Whining Man Child That Is Lebron James

Nobody disputes your basketball skills, though I’ve seen you choke or not show up plenty on the court at critical moments. But hey, you were the four time MVP and won three championships now, (not four, not five, not six….) so you must be King, right?

The Lyin’ King James, king of complainers, whiners and floppers, who rather than merely playing basketball, feels entitled to officiate games as he’s playing them; who believes his ability and legend and clout somehow anoint him to manipulate and control the sport, and the league itself, on and off the court.

Could it be you know there are people who can beat you otherwise? Could it be you know you have to play political games with the refs and league to win? Could it be you have a terror of not being in complete control, of not running the entire NBA?

You never cease lobbying, complaining, and generally badgering the refs throughout the games, telling them how to do their job. You spend more time with this, in fact, pleading some endless imagined case, bullying them into doing it your way, than playing the game itself.

There’s an implied threat in your lobbying and bullying: if they don’t watch it they might be out of a job. They better listen to you, they better not make any bullshit calls against you, they better watch their step in calling any damn thing against you, because Baby James is going to throw a shit fit, and who knows if they’ll have a job tomorrow.

No one else in the league does this. Not Steph Curry, Klay Thompson, Durant, Westbrook, Dwayne Wade, Chris Paul, Kawhi Leonard, nobody else. They put their heads down and play the damn game.

Oh yeah, now and then, when you’ve plowed into one of them and elbowed or shoved them down, and one of your lobbied refs calls a foul on them for it, they’ll complain. But you’re the only one in the entire National Basketball League hangs out with the refs through games jawing your mouth like a nagging prom queen on her period afraid she won’t win her crown.

What you lack, and desperately try to compensate for, is gospel character and integrity as a man and sportsman. Ironically, you’re the baby in the league, and a dishonest brat on the court. What you rely on to win is less your playing than your persona as the phenomenon King James. And it’s a shameless, childish farce, because you don’t need to, you should be better than that.

You know what you’re doing, and so do millions of people watching you. For a while I was not crazy about you, though I couldn’t put my finger on what so many people hated about you. You were one of the biggest, strongest, most endowed athletes in the league, with power, moves, a pretty good shooter, so what wasn’t there to love? And then I saw it. And now I see it clearly.

These people are not haters. They’re disgusted by phoniness, childish antics, bullying, and whining, and that you use these things without remorse to win.

You’re an emotionally infantile, whining man-child who doesn’t have enough actual confidence in his own abilities to not try to bully his way into greatness. But greatness requires something you don’t have: a lack of pretense, a lack of coyness, a forthcoming honesty.

You left your greatness somewhere else. Or never really knew what it was. You thought it was winning at any cost, including the cost of your integrity, but you were wrong.

When Stephen Curry was voted the first unanimous MVP in the history of this game, your childish ego complained. He’d won it the year before, along with the championship, and King James couldn’t handle that. Any sportsman with class would’ve merely congratulated him, because everyone who voted, voted for him alone, he was their choice. Stephen didn’t claim it, they did, which says it all.

But the Lyin’ King was the one dissenting, vocal vote, saying, “It depends on what you mean by most valuable.” The people who voted for him knew what “most valuable” meant, and so did you. It meant that he was the one who led his team to the first ever 73–9 record. It meant that he had many times more three’s than any player in history, and carried his team to the NBA finals doing it. And that more people valued him as a player than they did you.

What you really meant to say was, that little upstart twerp is not as good as me, and you people aren’t kissing my ass like I’m used to. I am goddamn King James, King of the Jungle, and you dare give every vote to this little three point shooter and MVP for a second straight year? I’m going to retire in a few years, I’m running out of time, and you’re supposed to be bowing down to me now, not this wonder kid who’s raining three’s like no man in the league ever imagined possible.

And so you whined your way through the playoffs, throwing your arms up every time there’s a call against you, comically flopping on the floor once when your own man barely touched you because you thought it was your opponent doing it, standing off with the refs running your mouth, hands waving like a traffic cop, getting the royal treatment of not getting technical calls for arguing and badgering and ranting at them, because you are the Great Lebron James, because you are immune from the rules, because there’s a different set of rules for you that you’re rewriting as you go.

And when you realized in the fourth quarter of game 4 of the finals you couldn’t beat the Warriors straight up, that you were going down 3–1, you started manhandling and slinging people around. You knocked the hell out of Stephen Curry inbounding the ball. You knocked Draymond Green down, knowing he would be suspended if he got another technical, then stepped over him dragging your testicles across his head, baiting him to retaliate or react, because you knew damn well he would. And when he came up slinging his arm toward you, not touching you, calling you a bitch, you go off like a roman candle, knowing the league will stick up for you, the great Lebron James, not this young, emotional player who’s making your life a nightmare on the court.

The refs looked at that play and argument and gave you both a regular foul, which is where it should have stayed. But then studied it some more, and talked to you and Draymond, and listened to your interviews, and Viola! Draymond Green is given a technical and suspended from critical game 5! The Lyin’ King gets his wish, gets his ass kissed, gets treated like some goddamn pampered Pomeranian, because the King was obviously very upset, didn’t like not getting his way, threw a hissy shit fit, was insulted by this “lesser player,” and off the court said who knows what to who knows who about it.

Which sets up game 5 for you and Irving to score 41 points each with the Warriors not having Green in the lineup. A game you would have done well in anyway, and maybe won, but without the crucial, fiery defense of Draymond Green you were pretty much assured a win.

And low and behold the refs start leaning your way, and then in game 6 they are all in your corner, giving you 3 foul calls against Curry which should have been called against you, which are an embarrassment to the organization. Getting him ejected when he throws his mouthpiece in utter disgust, altering the flow of the game, further demoralizing a team that can already feel the political underpinnings that are taking place, can feel that the league or somebody pulling the strings doesn’t want the Warriors to roll straight through and repeat like everyone knew they were going to, without King James and the Cavaliers having plenty of help to stop them.

And the whole damn 2016 NBA Championship finals became as suspect and fixed and as big a sham as a professional wrestling match, and millions of people could see it. You showed up big in games 5, 6 and 7, but you had plenty of help in those games from the refs and the league itself, to make sure it went 7 games, and to rob the Warriors of a level playing field.

It wasn’t basketball, it was a joke.

And that is the ultimate travesty. Greatness in sports requires fairness on the field, and you do everything in your power as The King to win without fairness, to win an unfair advantage. You expect to win because of who you are, not just how well you play. The greatest champions don’t have to act and whine and nag and strut like brats for their trophies. They win them straight up, pal, without any help from the people who call the games, from their organizations.

And those are the athletes history will look to as the Greatest, not some whining con man, man-child, bully poser. You didn’t win the 2016 NBA Championship, you manipulated and stole it. And nobody knows this better than you do.

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Ron Clinton Smith is a film actor, seen on “True Detective,” “Hidden Figures,” “Just Mercy,” and a writer of stories, songs, poetry, screenplays, and the novel Creature Storms.