The Cleveland Cavaliers’ 13-game playoff winning streak came to an end Sunday night thanks to a buzzer-beating shot from the Boston Celtics’ Avery Bradley that bounced off the rim four times before going through. That led to a fan in Cleveland’s Quicken Loans Arena delivering post-game trolling of Cavs’ star LeBron James. Here’s how ESPN’s Brian Windhorst described it on SportsCenter Sunday night:
And here’s how Windhorst described it in more detail on ESPN’s site, with the heckler standing up to LeBron referencing his Division III credentials at Hiram College in northeast Ohio:
LeBron got peeved at heckling fan after game. LeBron asked what fan had done. Dude replied: “I played at Hiram College.” Emotions were raw in the moment but the guy’s liquid courage was pretty hilarious. He was removed from arena shouting his college stats.
Well, shoutout to all the people who think a Division III basketball career makes them qualified to criticize LeBron James. It’s certainly worked for Fox Sports’ Skip Bayless, even if his high school career was nowhere near as impressive as he claimed. And LaVar Ball has been able to parlay a 2.2 points-per-game average at Washington State into a remarkable media career (again, mostly at Fox). So maybe Fox will have a job all ready for some random fan who played high school basketball and thinks that makes him qualified to criticize LeBron James.
Of course, this shouldn’t lead into the other extreme of blasting critics with “you didn’t play the game!” There’s plenty of sound, insightful criticism based on statistical analysis, smart observations and more, and not always from people with athletic careers. But it’s citing low-level athletic success as something that alone makes you qualified to comment on a dominant professional athlete like James that feels insane. This guy might have had some legitimate criticisms of how James played in this particular game (11 points, 30.8 per cent shooting), but yelling those at him after the game doesn’t feel like the smartest move, and neither does citing your own high school athletic career as proof that you know what you’re talking about. As poorly as James did, this guy undoubtedly would have fared much worse.
