LeBron James has had quite the 7-game Eastern Conference road trip, leading the Lakers to a 5-2 record capped off with a win over the Hawks in Atlanta on Monday night. In the fourth quarter of that game, James found himself once again dealing with some courtside hecklers (after saying a Cavs front office member’s taunts fueled his monster fourth quarter in Cleveland), who ended up getting kicked out after yelling at LeBron with their masks pulled down.
James spoke after the game about the incident and said he didn’t think they should’ve been thrown out for anything they said, noting he and the guy both said their piece and moved on when his wife got involved as well and was the one tossed. The woman, Juliana Carlos aka Courtside Karen, posted a lot of Instagram stories from the night, including of the incident but also afterwards where she had all the bravado of someone with some added liquid encouragement yelling at a 6’8 giant of a human. In her explanation of what happened, she said she and LeBron exchanged profanities after she told him she’d “f*ck him up” and told him to “sit the f*ck down, bitch,” which are equally hilarious.
However, her claim that LeBron joined in cursing her out was looked into by Chris Kirschner and Jovan Buha of The Athletic and from all the videos of the incident from courtside, from Carlos and others, they could only find one thing LeBron said.
The Athletic reviewed courtside video from Juliana Carlos and others in close vicinity, and the only comment that is audible from James is him saying “Ol’ steroid ass.”
It is always great when folks embellish a story right after publishing video of what actually happened, and it’s also a hysterical response from LeBron to Carlos who, well, I mean, look at him.
The Hawks are investigating the incident and have pushed back on there being an issue with having fans seated courtside during a pandemic, saying they are given a rapid test that has to come back negative before the games and have a mask mandate — which seems to be the chief reason for their ejection from the game.
