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The Lakers managed what you might call their first “real” NBA win in two weeks on Tuesday in Indiana, beating a Pacers team that had won two straight and doing so on the road without Anthony Davis in the lineup.
Before that, the Lakers had gone 2-5 in their previous seven games, their only wins coming against the Spurs and Pistons, teams with a combined 8-27 record.
Coming back from a one-game suspension after his tussle with Detroit’s Isaiah Stewart—the Lakers lost to the Knicks in the game James missed, dropping back below .500 on the season—James dominated with 39 points on 13-for-29 shooting, making five of the 12 3-pointers he attempted. He added six assists and five rebounds on the night, which saw the Lakers win in overtime.
Not bad, right?
Well, you just know it would not be enough for James’ biggest troll and media nemesis, Fox Sports 1’s Skip Bayless, who has made Twitter-hating on James a cornerstone of his late-career identity.
Wrote Bayless: “Congrats, LeBron. You should’ve won it in regulation. At least you did win it in overtime.”
Sigh.
James did, indeed, help the Lakers win in overtime—and in the fourth quarter, despite missing the game-winning 3-point attempt in the final seconds in regulation, which Bayless called “gutless.” James scored 17 points with three assists, going 3-for-7 from the 3-point line and 4-for-4 from the free-throw line in the fourth quarter and overtime.
If you follow Bayless on Twitter, you know to expect that kind of thing anytime James plays, win or lose. But Bayless really stepped in it when he referred to James as “LeSnitch” after James went to a referee to have two fans sitting in courtside seats ejected. That’s because Bayless has a pretty spotty history when it comes to snitching himself.
Bayless Was Sued by Former NBA Star
That became obvious when one of the great NBA scorers of the 80s and 90s, Eddie Johnson, stepped into Bayless’ Twitter feed. In 2006, a former NBA player named Eddie Lee Johnson—who was an All-Star for the Atlanta Hawks in the 1970s—was accused of sexually assaulting a young girl in Florida (he was later convicted and sentences to life in prison).
But it was not the former Illinois great and 1988-89 NBA Sixth Man of the Year Eddie Arnet Johnson, whose career spanned 18 seasons and who maintains a strong media presence as an analyst with the Phoenix Suns and on Sirius XM’s NBA Radio. The Chicago Tribune, though, reported the story as though it was Eddie Arnet Johnson.
Bayless, who was filling in as host of the Jim Rome Show at the time, ran with the Tribune’s report, giving the story national air time. Johnson sued both the Tribune and Bayless, though an appeals court eventually found that there was no, “actual malice or disregard for the truth,” on the paper’s behalf.
Still, Johnson does seek to remind Bayless of his error when possible. And the LeSnitch comment was an obvious opportunity.
Bayless Backed Off ‘LeSnitch’ Assertion
Maybe Bayless sought to back off the James comment after seeing what Johnson wrote. Johnson has been a defender of James over the years on his NBA Radio show with Justin Termine.
Bayless had an entirely different tone about the incident in which James had the fans thrown out the next day. Gone was the “LeSnitch” stance, which had been trending around Twitter during the Pacers game. Now, Bayless suddenly “appreciated” James’ restraint.
Wrote Bayless: “When LeBron gets that mean mug going, you’re in some big trouble, and maybe those fans lit his fire. I appreciated the fact that instead of getting into it with them, LeBron immediately got the referee.”
Ahem. Sure.
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