LeBron James did not mince words when responding to New York Knicks team president Phil Jackson’s comments, in which the former-Bulls and Lakers head coach called James and his friends, “a posse.”
Jackson made the comments during a Q & A with ESPN’s Jackie MacMullin, referring to a time when LeBron was with the Heat and he and his entourage wanted to keep the team in Cleveland an extra day so he could stay with his family longer.
“You can’t hold up the whole team because you and your mom and your posse want to spend an extra night in Cleveland,” said Jackson.
LeBron told reporters on Tuesday how he felt about Jackson’s criticism.
“I had nothing but respect for him as a coach, for what he was able to do obviously at the helm of my favorite player of all-time in MJ and also growing up watching the Lakers,” James said.
“But I’ve got nothing for him.”
James believes Jackson’s comments were racially motivated, particularly the use of the word “posse” to describe LeBron and his life-long friends, like Maverick Carter and Rich Paul, who are also his business partners.
“I don’t believe that Phil Jackson would have used that term if he was doing business with someone else and working with another team or if he was working with anybody in sports that was owning a team that wasn’t African-American and had a group of guys around them that didn’t agree with what they did. I don’t think he would have called them a posse,” said James.
“But it just shows how far we have to go. But it won’t stop us from doing what we need to do as a group.”
We’ll keep you updated on Jackson’s response, but at the very least it would appear that the coaching legend made a poor choice of words and LeBron has reason to believe it runs deeper than that.
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