I Don’t Trust Black Men Who Hate LeBron James

Of course, Golden State’s NBA Finals victory over Cleveland has delivered joy to many different (and occasionally overlapping) groups of people, including but not limited to:

1. Warriors fans.
   
2. Fans of teams such as the Houston Rockets, the Los Angeles Lakers, the Philadelphia 76ers and any other place that might have a decent shot at landing LeBron since this Cavs team was so thoroughly outmatched.
   
3. Light-skint Christians who shop at Talbots and Williams Sonoma.
   
4. Oakland, Calif.- and Washington, D.C.-area barbers. Since Kevin Durant is now a two-time Finals MVP, more endorsements might happen. And perhaps he’ll take this opportunity to (finally) vet and retain some top-notch barbering services.
   
5. Restaurants with missing and/or stolen dumpsters. Now that the series is over, they can just hire Jordan Clarkson to replace them.

With each aforementioned faction, their happiness is based on, well, happy things, like success and opportunity and more efficient uses of Jordan Clarkson’s talent. There’s another group of people, though, who are even happier than the rest. They’ve been on cloud nine since Friday night, but their joy is based on failure.

They’re not hard to find. They’re on Twitter and Facebook. They’re at barbershops and cookouts. They might have even been in your house Friday night, eating your chips, sitting on your chairs and breathing up your air with their hate-filled nostrils.

And the reason they’re filled with Christmas-morning glee is that the team LeBron James happens to be on lost, which means LeBron James lost.

Now, there are myriad possible reasons (some) people take particular pleasure in watching LeBron fail. Many stem from conversations about historical legacy. If he fails, it weakens his case for being considered better than the two people he’s compared to most: Kobe Bryant and Michael Jordan.

Of course, while LeBron passed Kobe like five exits ago (sorry), there are very valid arguments to be made about why LeBron hasn’t (and may never) surpass Michael. And there’s nothing wrong with believing that he hasn’t. But for some people, the dismissal of and delight in LeBron’s defeat have surpassed mundane sports debate and become almost pathological. It’s like they’re John Wick and LeBron killed their dog.

And as the the homie Joel Anderson articulated the other day, these vehement LeBron haters all seem to have something in common.

Joel D. Anderson
This is a good time to bring up something I’ve realized over the years: I generally don’t trust black men who denigrate Bron and his accomplishments.

And people in my mentions won’t change my mind about this. Sorry, not sorry. https://twitter.com/sheriffclarke/status/1005286927652802561 …

8:06 PM - Jun 9, 2018​

In the tweet, he’s referencing comments made by sentient frozen rabbit piss David Clarke about James and Jordan. And while using the conscientiously shitty Sheriff Clarke might seem like an extreme example for this point, it’s actually not. Anti-Bron brothas are like anti-vaxxers. They treat shitty opinions like Lay’s potato chips: “Betcha can’t believe just one.”

Seriously, think of the vehement Bron haters you might know—those who search for opportunities to minimize and insult his accomplishments. Would you trust their opinions on anything? Politics, feminism, potato salad ... whatever. I wouldn’t trust those niggas with a straw.

I guess this is less about LeBron and more about the type of person who hates him this way. Perhaps their embrace of confirmation bias and obsession with nostalgia and noise naturally lead them to certain beliefs, and hating LeBron just happens to be one of them. Either way, it’s almost like the first question in the LeBron Hate Club new-membership packet is: “Do you enjoy being on the wrong side of history?”

(Admittedly, I was tempted to remove the “black” qualifier and just say I don’t trust any man who expends energy hating LeBron. But I already don’t trust most white men, so that would have been unnecessary.)

https://verysmartbrothas.theroot.com/i-dont-trust-black-men-who-hate-lebron-james-1826734467