LeBron James is a hot commodity these days, and the billboard wars trying to recruit him to play for various NBA teams are escalating. Sixers fans got things started with a billboard asking James to sign with Philadelphia in free agency this summer, and Cavaliers fans shot back with a billboard of their own.
The latest billboard came out of Los Angeles, with four in the LA area coming from a Lakers superfan this week. James and the Cavaliers happen to be playing there this weekend, so questions about said billboards were pretty inevitable.
LeBron has said in the past that he’s done talking about his assumed free agency, but he has talked about how fun it is to see fans want him on their team. And that’s a similar reaction he had to the LA billboards as well.
James spoke to the media on Friday and according to NBC Los Angeles he said he was “flattered” by the billboards and said that, though he did not see them in person just yet, he saw the hubbub about them online.
“I’m 15 years into my career and fans in cities want me to play for their team and have dreams, I think it’s pretty cool,” James said, while grouping the billboards in LA with a similar stunt pulled in Philadelphia recently. “Listen, my kids see things like that. They think it’s cool. I think it’s cool. It’s flattering more than anything that a fan of a team or somewhere will want me to play in their city. It’s very flattering.”
The initial Sixers billboard sparked a rumor that James has toured high schools in Philadelphia, which he denied. But James has already had those rumors happen with him in the Los Angeles area. None of this will be solved until this summer, and it’s extremely unlikely a billboard convinces him of much of anything. But hey, it’s always nice to support the advertising industry.
