LeBron James has been in the eye of the storm recently. After accidentally hitting Pistons players Isaiah Stewart, LeBron James was ejected from the game for only the second time in his career. His teammate Anthony Davis came to his defense and said that James was not a dirty player.
James even reached out to Isaiah Stewart and tried to apologize to him and tell him that he did not hit him intentionally. But some fans aren’t buying it, and have accused LeBron of making that play intentionally and trying to hurt Stewart with full malice aforethought.
In fact, one NBA fan on Reddit made a compilation of all of LeBron’s dirty plays in his career (slide through the post below). These incidents range from seemingly innocuous to seemingly obvious. It included plays against Stephen Curry, Draymond Green, and Andre Iguodala, with the intent of showcasing James as a dirty player.
Now there are two sides to this coin. On the one hand, one can make the argument that James, because of his star power, is going to be allowed to get away with more than others. And that lenience is extended to all other superstars in the league because of their name value.
But on the other hand, these kinds of compilations can be made for any player, and a lot of these clips are usually devoid of context. It would be reckless to use these clips as the basis to label LeBron James as a dirty player, given that he’s never had that kind of reputation throughout his career.
In fact, James has only been suspended once in his entire career, despite playing more than 1500 games and more than 39,000 minutes in the NBA. So, this should not be used as the basis for James being dubbed a dirty player, given that this is one of the few times in his career that this kind of incident has happened in his career.
