LeBron James is trying to clear up some misconceptions about the shirt he chose to wear when he first arrived in Cleveland with the rest of his teammates after winning the NBA championship.

Fresh off a game 7 victory which capped off a 3-1 comeback, James was wearing an Ultimate Warrior shirt as he exited the plane.

It was seen as a suspicious choice to wear the shirt of a wrestler who shared the same name of the team just beaten in the Finals, but James insists that it was just a coincidence.

In an interview with Business Insider, he said that it resulted from the previous shirt he was wearing being sprayed with champagne, and it was the only other shirt he had readily available to him.

“It got soaking wet,” said James, referring to the shirt he planned to wear on the trip back. “So I had to throw it in the trash, and the only other shirt I had in my bag was my Ultimate Warrior T-shirt.”

James further explained that while his other clothes were in bags underneath the plane, the Ultimate Warrior shirt was the one shirt he had in his travel luggage.

That sounds like an absurd coincidence, but there’s a middle ground here. What probably happened is that James didn’t plan this as a premeditated stunt, but it would be disingenuous of him to say that the connection never occurred to him.

Apparently the Ultimate Warrior was one of his favorite wrestlers as a kid, so his wife bought him the shirt. That story seems reasonable, because not only was the Ultimate Warrior a legend, but James’ wife is from all accounts a nice lady.

“She asked me who my favorite wrestlers were, and I told her Sting, ‘Stone Cold’ Steve Austin, Ultimate Warrior, The Undertaker, and Ric Flair,” said James. “So one day I get home from practice, and there are these T-shirts laying in my bedroom, and my wife purchased them from a store.”

Later in the interview, James got asked whether he still would have worn that shirt coming back to Cleveland if the Cavaliers had lost.

“That would have still been the T-shirt I’d have had on,” said James. This is where I’m skeptical, though. 

First of all, in this hypothetical, his original shirt wouldn’t have been sprayed with champagne, because the Cavaliers would have lost, hence no celebration.

Second of all, I don’t believe for a moment that James would have still worn that Ultimate Warrior shirt if the Cavaliers had lost.

James seems acutely aware of how he’s perceived by fans, and he knows very well the type of backlash that would have occurred if he had been wearing that shirt after losing to the Warriors.

He would have been absolutely ridiculed for it, and he’s not oblivious enough to not realize that.

I’m willing to buy that he didn’t originally plan on wearing the Ultimate Warrior shirt, but there’s no conceivable way that it would have been the shirt he wore back to Cleveland after a loss.

He would have just asked to borrow someone else’s shirt. He’s overplaying his hand here, because while it’s believable that it truly was just a coincidence that he was wearing that shirt and there was no premeditation to it, for him to say that he’d be wearing it regardless of winning or losing is ridiculous.

2 Responses

  1. Adolfo C. Rios

    NBA = Sham,
    I h8 conspiracies but winners really are decided pre-game as executives tell refs “how to call the game”

    Every game is reffed different, with either “let em play” (don’t call fouls) or “call it tight” (free throw fest). The Warriors were artificially pushed to 7 games in each of their last two series. I think refs at one point gave OKC over 40 free throws a game and at the same time Warriors were getting about 12-15 less free throws

    In the finals, a questionable suspension for green, questionable because refs deemed it incidental, and the following game 5 would have closed out the series quickly. But executives suspended him after the fact, despite lebron creating the conflict.
    a Curry ejection the following game after protesting several non fouls in which he was whistled for 5 fouls.

    Also tv used to replay every foul call in the playoffs, now whenever the foul call is questionable, they switch cameras to players and benches but rarely replay the questionable incident. It’s suspect, especially when everything could be solved by allowing coaches to challenge calls if they really wanted to fix the problem. Once refs call games uniform, and coaches get to challenge shit calls, then maybe it will be different. But there is too much money at stake to let a random team win and I think the commissioner wants to power to influence winners. Maybe that’s why we didn’t get a Spurs/Warriors showdown. The Spurs got robbed in the aoKC series with crap calls.