Rachel Nichols appears to have gotten on LeBron James’ bad side thanks to some recent comments she made. An account on X revealed that James recently unfollowed Nichols on the platform.
“LeBron James is no longer following
Rachel Nichols.”
👀 LeBron James (KingJames) is no longer following @Rachel__Nichols
— NBA Alerts (@theNBAalert) June 27, 2024
As for why James might have gotten upset with Nichols, it appears to be due to some comments she made about his son, Bronny James, on Undisputed.
“Will he ever be a star? I don’t think so,” Nichols said. “It does not seem like just his size and some of the other things about the way he plays, I don’t think he’s a future star player.”
(starts at 0:26 mark):
https://twitter.com/undisputed/status/1805617167573930250
Nichols felt that Bronny’s upside was being a solid defensive guard and compared him to the likes of Marcus Smart and Davion Mitchell. I would say that was a pretty fair analysis from the 50-year-old.
If there was a realistic chance that Bronny could become a superstar, then he would have been a consensus first-round pick and he wasn’t that. The Los Angeles Lakers ended up selecting the 19-year-old with the 55th pick of the 2024 NBA Draft and some still criticized the pick.
Bronny averaged 4.8 points, 2.8 rebounds, 2.1 assists, 0.8 steals, and 0.2 blocks per game as a freshman for USC and the prevalent notion is that he only got drafted because LeBron is his father. Anyone who thinks that played no role in the Lakers picking him, is probably being a bit too naive.
Getting back to Nichols, if this was truly the reason why James unfollowed her, then I do feel for her to an extent. That was a pretty fair assessment of Bronny’s abilities. At no point did she claim he doesn’t deserve to be in the league or that he will certainly be a bust. Nichols even stated Bronny could be as good as Smart, who won DPOY in 2022.
LeBron James Had Gone On An Unfollowing Spree Previously
This isn’t the first time this month, that James has raised eyebrows with his activity on X. LeBron went on a mysterious unfollow spree a couple of weeks ago, as the 39-year-old unfollowed Ben Simmons, Kendrick Perkins, and Blake Griffin.
While many were puzzled as to why Simmons and Griffin were unfollowed, there appeared to be a fairly clear reason why Perkins was. A few days earlier, Perkins had ripped LeBron for trying to steal the moment from the Boston Celtics and the Dallas Mavericks. He claimed his former teammate was trying to “weasel” his way into someone else’s moment as he has done in the past.
Perkins wildly reacted to James unfollowing him by stating that not everyone followed Jesus. I think that act did bother the big man, as the two of them appeared to be good friends at one point. Perkins having no filter on television has led to him burning a lot of bridges and this seems to have been another instance of that.
It will be interesting to see if Nichols responds to James unfollowing her at some point. She isn’t quite as unfiltered as Perkins, though, so the response would be quite measured and nothing like his.
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