Kyle Terada-USA TODAY Sports
Last week, LeBron James and Dwyane Wade told the Miami Herald that the Los Angeles Lakers current negative attention doesn’t compare to what the Miami Heat had to go through during the 2010-2011 season, when James announced in a television special that he would take his ”talents to South Beach.”
James joined Chris Bosh and Wade in Miami. As a result, he would spend much of 2010 and 2011 as one of the most hated athletes in the country.
The 2010-2011 season wasn’t kind to the Heat. They lost to the Dallas Mavericks in the finals after insisting that that they would win multiple championships. This brought on a year of LeBron James ringless jokes and insults.
It was rough. When asked about the Lakers struggles, James is quoted as saying:
“No one will ever be able to compare what we went through,” James said. “Even though they’re not winning and they’re losing a lot of games, it’s still nowhere near what we went through.
“Yeah, right. That level of magnitude was nowhere near where ours was two years ago. Nothing. Nothing compares to it.”
Wade agreed with James that the Lakers struggles don’t compare. He elaborated that the Lakers are “America’s team.” Therefore, suggesting that everyone is rooting for the Lakers success.
Since Kobe Bryant is leading the league in interviews, he quickly responded to James.
On Wednesday, Bryant simply responded to James via ESPN with a question, “What does it matter? What does he want, a cookie for that?”
Although, it shouldn’t have taken a week to come up with this line, still it’s pretty good.
It’s hard to feel sorry for a guy who brought it on himself, unless you’re Dwight Howard, who was a little more diplomatic than Kobe:
“Most people hated LeBron for what he did and how he did it,” Howard said. “Not just that he left, but the manner that he left as far as doing it on TV and the whole thing. In this situation, I don’t think people have hate for the Lakers for [trading for Howard and Nash]. I think that’s a little bit different. As far as pressure, with our team, everyone expected us to go 82-0 so there’s a lot of pressure on us. We feel it every time we step on the court and we can hear it every time we miss a shot or somebody scores. People are upset. They don’t expect anybody to score on us. It’s a lot of pressure.”
