LeBron James took time after the Cavs beat the Lakers last night to offer struggling rookie Lonzo Ball a few words. The internet immediately jumped into speculative sleuth mode, attempting to discern what LeBron may have told Lonzo.
Was he telling him he was coming to Los Angeles next year? Was he telling him he loves Ball In The Family? It could have been anything!
But as with most mysteries, the answers ended up falling short of the buildup, like decoding a secret message only to find out they’ve been telling you to drink more Ovaltine. Thanks to a Reddit user, Chinese footage emerged with the actual audio, which is probably NSFW:
A transcript:
“Find your zone and just stay fucking locked in. The media is going to ask you what I told you right now. Tell them nothing. Just be aggressive every single day. It’s white noise to you. That’s all it is. All right? Let’s go.”
Some meaningless, inspiration-poster babble was always the most likely scenario, of course. After all, that’s pretty much how all the post-game, on-court conversations between players go. Still, it was amusing to see everyone lose their minds, however briefly.
And then we have ESPN, which tried to milk the faux-drama even after we learned the actual truth, going with this headline:
(They’ve actually changed since, though it lives on with the URL.)
In the end, it’s a nice reminder that these guys are generally not planning any kind of free agent maneuvers or discussing any juicy details.
At least not on the court, anyway.
[Reddit]
