ATLANTA, GEORGIA – JANUARY 30: LeBron James #23 of the Los Angeles Lakers holds his knee after falling against the Atlanta Hawks during the third quarter at State Farm Arena on January 30, 2024 in Atlanta, Georgia.
There’s a particular word that always gets LeBron James riled up.
Mario Chalmers, who played with the four-time MVP during his Miami Heat days, recently revealed what that word is, having recalled an altercation he had with LBJ back in the day.
Mario and LeBron didn’t always see eye-to-eye and you might remember a near-violent interaction they had on the Heat bench one time, after which LeBron acknowledged he was in the wrong.
The former Heat point guard made an appearance on ‘The OGs’ podcast with former teammates Udonis Haslem and Mike Miller and, during his interview, revealed he used a certain trigger word to fire him up against Paul George.
“So the key matchup was him and Paul George…So we in transition, George Hill run to the corner. I run with Hill, Paul, George stop at the wing and shoot the three, and Bron like ‘Guard him.’
“Okay. So that’s all I say on the corner. So we get back to the bench. I’m like ‘We losing all this B -Ing that we doing. We got to stop acting like B -s just play F -Ing basketball. Like you the best player out here. Stop being a B- and go play’. And he took offense to that. It was kind of like you just jumped at me like me.”
“Yeah he jumped at him,” Haslem recalled.” You did say he a B- though.”
“You asked for that,” Miller added.
“I didn’t call him a B- I said stop playing like a B-. What’s my job? To get everybody going and start some S- right?” Chalmers explained. “So boom, there it goes and Bron went off! So I did my job. I paid for it. Got benched but did what I was supposed to do.”
Chalmers also pointed out that James got hit with the B- word this season with Rockets coach Ime Udoka getting sent off after getting into it with the Lakers star on the sidelines during a game last year.
As Haslem pointed out, no one likes being referred to as such, so it’s always going to sting a guy considered to be the Greatest Of All Time by a large section of basketball fans.
