The NBA Finals loss was so painful that admittedly I took the next couple days to avoid anything basketball.
I didn’t give much thought when LeBron James returned to Cleveland wearing an Ultimate Warrior shirt, but just rolled my eyes.
I guess when a team overcomes a 3-1 deficit, they deserve to make backhanded statements like that.
The beauty is that with something as subtle as that, plausible deniability is always a formidable defense.
James could always just say that it was a coincidence, and that observers are simply projecting something onto the situation that isn’t actually there.
Apparently that’s exactly what he’s claiming in a recent interview with Business Insider. Wearing the Ultimate Warrior shirt wasn’t any type of statement, but just a bizarre coincidence.
His original shirt was soaked in champagne, and that was the only shirt he had in his travel luggage to put on before the plane touched down in Cleveland.
His wife originally bought him a bunch of shirts of his favorite wrestlers, and Ultimate Warrior fell into that category.
It’s reasonable enough of a story, but then James overplays his hand by saying that even if the Cavaliers had lost game 7, he’d still have worn that shirt returning to Cleveland.
That’s absolutely absurd. A player who’s as conscious of his image as James is would have been well aware of the ridicule that would have been sent his way if he wore a shirt with the same name as the team he just lost to.
Even if it was his only shirt readily available, he would have simply asked another teammate if he could borrow a shirt, because he’s smart enough to not set himself up for jokes like that.
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