Getty Los Angeles Lakers forward LeBron James
Remember that time DeShawn Stevenson called LeBron James overrated?
Think back: 2008 NBA Playoffs, Stevenson, a member of the Washington Wizards at the time, said that James, who was serving his first stint with the Cleveland Cavaliers was an overrated basketball player. James, seemingly unfazed and chasing his first NBA title at the time, replied stating that Stevenson would be like “Jay-Z responding to Soulja Boy.”
Jay-Z stepped in.
Sampling the instrumental and vocals from Too Short’s Blow The Whistle, Hov went ham!
It happened 11 years ago yesterday as noted by Bleacher Report’s Thomas Duffy.
👑 BLOW THE WHISTLE 👑
On this day in 2008, Jay Z dropped a diss track to DeShawn Stevenson because he was feuding with LeBron during Cavs/Wizards.
LBJ averaged 32/12/9 to close the series.
If you’re tardy to the party, Jay-Z said:
“Ask my n**** LeBron! We so big we ain’t gotta respond. When you talkin to a don, please have respect like you’re talking to your mom. We let the money do the talkin. As you see we be talkin rather often. The ROC Boys in the buildin. Another hundred fifty million don’t it sound like we yellin?!!! Who the f*** overrated?! If anything they underpaid him. Hatin that’s only ‘gonna make him spend the night out of spite with the chick you’ve been datin. We the best of the best. We ‘gon be here so the rest could take a rest, I gotta get this off my chest, No pause none of that s***, get off my d***”
“I thought it was dope cause it’s Jay,” DeShawn Stevenson told me on Scoop B Radio.
“But it just caught me off guard because you know, I don’t rap. So you know, it was just a weird situation. I thought it was clever because I’m from California, Fresno obviously Blow The Whistle, so honestly at the moment it’s nothing against Jay it was more about LeBron and the situation that was going on.”
James and Stevenson’s quarrel began after a disagreement that Stevenson felt was a dead issue. “It was just something I heard in the locker room,” said Stevenson.
“Long situation that got back to me and I felt that, with that type of player you shouldn’t be talking in the locker room and doing stuff like that.”
When asked to further their issue from way back, Stevenson stated:
“I don’t like to go back and forth because it’s getting kind of old, but to me it was disrespectful. I felt like it’s a brotherhood and I felt like I came straight out of high school and you did too. So we should be uplifting not trying to hold each other down.”
Stevenson and James made peace since the incident. In 2011, Stevenson, a member of the Dallas Mavericks faced off against James’ Miami Heat in the NBA Finals. The Mavericks would win.
Appearing on Scoop B Radio, Too $hort weighed in on Jay-Z’s sampling of Blow The Whistle.
According to the Oakland rapper, he believes that Jay-Z, then a mironity of the Nets, used the song as a tactic to recruit LeBron James to the Nets during free agency in 2010.
“So I guess in his mind he was gearing up to, at that point, I think he was thinking about signing LeBron and having him play for the Nets,” Too Short shared with me via Scoop B Radio in March.
“And he was courting LeBron and LeBron was special to him and ol’ boy [Stevenson] stepped on LeBron’s toes talking sh** and Jay was like, ‘I’m going to shut this down.’ And he probably saw the moment where the crowd reacted to the song and then that was on his mind.”
Stevenson who briefly played for the Nets can see Too Short’s logic.
Of course, for sure,” he said.
“I mean you look at LeBron right now you can’t deny he’s a hell of a player so it’s kind of like him having his back and that’s why I didn’t look at it as a certain type of situation but you know being from Cali Too Short knows we Cali people we move different you can’t do those type of things so I just took it for what it is.”