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NBA star and Los Angeles Lakers star LeBron James is being heavily criticized for conveniently forgetting his own recommendations on freedom of speech.
James tweeted a photo of the police officer involved in the Ma’Khia Bryant shooting, Nicholas Reardon, and tweeted “YOU’RE NEXT,” in clear reference to the recent conviction of police officer Derek Chauvin, who was found guilty on all charges for the murder of George Floyd.
The sportstar posted the tweet after various reports were published about the shooting that ended in the death of Ma’Khia Bryant, a 16-year-old girl who was in a fight with another girl.
In the clips disseminated by the media and social platforms, it can be seen how Bryant had a knife in the middle of the altercation and was about to stab another girl, from there, officer Reardon made the decision to shoot to protect the life of the victim, generating a new wave of controversy around police brutality.
Thousands of people quickly echoed the tweet with the officer’s photo, generating numerous hate messages. LeBron James’ post generated so much controversy that the Lakers player decided to delete it, explaining that it had been used to generate “more hate.”
“I’m so damn tired of seeing Black people killed by police. I took the tweet down because its being used to create more hate. This isn’t about one officer. it’s about the entire system and they always use our words to create more racism. I am so desperate for more ACCOUNTABILITY,” LeBron tweeted.
Later, in another tweet, LeBron James criticized “voter suppression” directed toward black people in Arizona accusing the state’s policies as racist.
Lebron James fails to live up to his recommendation about being “accountable” when speaking up
In 2019, the basketballer harshly criticized then Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey because he had condemned the Chinese communist regime and decided to lend his support to pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong.
“Fight for freedom, support Hong Kong,” the Texan team leader wrote on Twitter. Such a pronouncement generated an immediate response from the Chinese Communist Party, which decided to boycott NBA games in China.
LeBron James, who is an important anti-racist activist -in fact, he is one of the stars supporting the Marxist movement Black Lives Matter-, made the decision to go against Morey calling him uninformed about the situation in China and urging him to be “responsible” on his social networks.
“I don’t want to get into a [verbal] feud with Daryl Morey, but I believe he wasn’t educated on the situation at hand” LeBron James said before a Lakers preseason game against the Warriors.
“And so many people could have been harmed not only financially, physically, emotionally, spiritually. So just be careful what we tweet and say and we do, even though, yes, we do have freedom of speech, but there can be a lot of negative that comes with that, too,” the basketball player stated.
After LeBron posted the photo of official Nicholas Reardon posting the ‘YOU’RE NEXT’, social networks did not forgive the basketball player remembering his own words directed towards Morey.
“[LeBron] Should listen to his own advice,” wrote John Cooper of the Heritage Foundation, who posted the video recalling LeBron’s words.
Comments quoting the tweet immediately began pouring in.
“Absolute hypocrite and coward,” wrote conservative commentator and radiologist Pradheep J. Shanker.
“LeBron James is a hypocrite and a bully. Show me the lie,” writer Kimberly Ross lashed out.
Ben Shapiro, editor emeritus of the Daily Wire, was also harsh in his criticism of LeBron James.
“By destroying the police, you are ensuring more dead innocent black Americans. It’s not about saving black lives. It’s about destroying the police, at the cost of black lives,” Shapiro wrote on Twitter accompanied by a screenshot of the basketball player’s deleted tweet.
“If you want to talk about systemic racism -about policy designed to harm black Americans- it’s hard to do better than destroying police,” the anchor added in a second tweet.
This is not the first time the basketballer has been accused of double standards or questioned for simply getting into political or social activism issues. In late February, storied Swedish soccer player Zlatan Ibrahimovic criticized LeBron James for his controversial political activism.
“Yes, I like [LeBron James] a lot. He’s phenomenal at what he does, but I don’t like it when people have a certain status and go into politics while doing what they do,” Zlatan said. “I mean, do what you’re good at, work in the category you work in. I play soccer because I’m the best at playing soccer. I don’t do politics. If I was a politician I would do politics.”
Emmanuel Alejandro Rondón is a journalist at El American specializing in the areas of American politics and media analysis // Emmanuel Alejandro Rondón es periodista de El American especializado en las áreas de política americana y análisis de medios de comunicación.
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