LeBron Went Off On Selfish Coaches Who Put Themselves Ahead Of Young Players

If there’s anyone who knows about the perils of finding too much success too soon, it’s LeBron James. By the time he was 16 years old, his face was plastered across the glossy covers of sports magazines, and everyone was heralding him as the second coming of Michael Jordan.

It would’ve been easy for LeBron to let it all go to his head, to rely solely on his immense talent and not put in the work necessary to reach the next level. But that’s not what happened. In terms of work ethic, LeBron is of the same ilk as Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, and other all-time greats whose natural gifts are superseded only by a borderline sociopathic drive to achieve greatness.

Maybe LeBron is getting a little cranky in his old age, because he fired off a tweet-storm Sunday night chiding the next generation and, more significantly, those responsible for their growth and development, for being coddled too much.

Aside from a few happy linguistic accidents like “breads the hunger” and “sugar coded,” LeBron echoes many of the qualms people have about high-school recruiting, AAU culture, and the one-and-done phenomenon at the college level, although it’s difficult to decipher exactly what prompted last night’s diatribe.

He recently had a very high-profile war of words with LaVar Ball, the overly-verbose patriarch of a whole clan of five-star recruits, including UCLA star Lonzo Ball. The elder Ball’s insatiable penchant for trumpeting his kids’ greatness came back to bite him this weekend after Lonzo was thoroughly outplayed by Kentucky’s De’Aaron Fox as the Wildcats ousted the Bruins from the tournament.

LeBron himself is the father of fledgling athletes, so perhaps last night’s tweets were at least partially directed inward. It’ll be fascinating to see just how LeBron and any of his kids’ coaches treat them growing up, given their level of fame.