LeBron James and Dwyane Wade aren’t teammates any more, but they’re still close friends, which means they’re liable to get competitive and trash talk one another about any number of things. With the teams from each star’s respective hometowns meeting in this year’s World Series, it was unsurprising that LeBron and D-Wade would place a friendly wager on proceedings, and equally predictable that Wade would delight in holding James to it.
LeBron’s Cavs play Wade’s Bulls in Chicago on Friday night, which means it’s time for James to pay up. In this case, it means showing up to the game in a full Cubs uniform, which LeBron has confirmed he will do.
“I’m not wearing cleats,” James said Thursday after the Cavs’ morning shoot-around. “I got a basketball game to play. No glove. Just the uniform. I will be in uniform.”
LeBron grew up a Yankees fan, but as was detailed in Lee Jenkins’ profile of him, he’s come to identify more and more with Cleveland as he’s grown older, and that includes pulling for the city’s teams. Apologies for the long quote; you should seriously give that article a read.
At times, he seemed to rebel against the role that was handed to him, famously doffing a Yankees hat before a playoff game against the Indians at Jacobs Field in ‘07.
Juxtapose that image with the scene at the World Series this fall, James wearing Indians hats and jerseys to his suite at Progressive Field, leaving Beats by Dre headphones in the home clubhouse with notes that read: It’s your turn. “LeBron James pretty much is Cleveland,” says Indians closer Cody Allen, “and when he is on your Jumbotron, going nuts with his guys, that stuff gets ingrained in your mind. Things in this city changed when the Cavs won. People took that excitement and optimism and shifted it right over to us. I don’t necessarily think we needed that, but it breathed something into us. Everywhere you went, you’d see Cavs gear and Indians gear. They went together. In front of mom-and-pop stores, you’d see Cavs banners with Indians banners. It was like small-town high-school football pride.”
That sort of pride is great when your team wins and you can bask in the glory, but it does tend to come back to bite you when they fall short. LeBron knows a thing or two about that, and now he’s going to have to wear it on Friday.
And Wade is still having fun with it:
https://twitter.com/highkin/status/804413652459778048
(Via USA Today)
