The Los Angeles Lakers took down the Atlanta Hawks 107-99 on Monday night to improve to 16-6 on the season. But the main story from the game wasn’t about the actual basketball being played. Instead, the postgame talk was about courtside fans getting into it with LeBron James, which led to four fans being ejected (last week, the Hawks began allowing up to 1,700 fans in State Farm Arena). The verbal altercation even led to a stoppage in play.
Refs stop the game after a Hawks fan heckles LeBron pic.twitter.com/NsoFjyel97
— Bleacher Report (@BleacherReport) February 2, 2021
Bron got heckled by a fan in Atlanta. 👀🍿 pic.twitter.com/6dcVpyhy9K
— House of Highlights (@HoHighlights) February 2, 2021
Two women and two men have been escorted off the court. One of the women left with middle fingers up toward the court. https://t.co/qlQGlsYIBm
— Chris Kirschner (@ChrisKirschner) February 2, 2021
LeBron spoke about the incident in the postgame press conference, and said that he didn’t think it was warranted for the fans to be ejected:
"At the end of the day, I'm happy fans are back in the building. … I miss that interaction. … We as players need that interaction."
LeBron on his interaction with spectators in Atlanta on Monday: pic.twitter.com/spWDITZqkl
— SportsCenter (@SportsCenter) February 2, 2021
“At the end of the day, I’m happy fans are back in the building. I miss that interaction. I need that interaction. We as players need that interaction. I don’t feel like it was warranted to be kicked out. There was a back-and-forth between two grown men. He said his piece, I said my piece. Then someone else jumped into it and shared their piece. But I don’t think they should’ve been kicked out.”
Well, one of the fans that was ejected wasn’t as kind about assessing the incident.
Juliana Carlos took to Instagram with a series of (NSFW Language) videos ranting about the altercation, claiming that LeBron cussed out her husband Chris, leading to her doing the same to LeBron.
https://twitter.com/NotScTop10plays/status/1356438590713180161
https://twitter.com/NotScTop10plays/status/1356439231732867080
https://twitter.com/NotScTop10plays/status/1356444958253801473
And then LeBron fired off this tweet: “Courtside Karen was MAD MAD!!”
Courtside Karen was MAD MAD!! 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
— LeBron James (@KingJames) February 2, 2021
And you can be sure that Courtside Karen will immediately be trending on Twitter.