LeBron James Doesn’t Understand People Getting Mad Over Jordan Bell’s Self Alley-Oop

The Warriors took out some frustrations on the Mavs on Monday night in a 133-103 win in Dallas to get to 2-2 on the season and back on track. Golden State looked like the team we all expected them to be, with a dominant offensive performance and better defensive effort than we’ve seen early this season.

The difference between this year’s team and last year’s team to many entering the season was that the 2017-18 squad has more depth. Omri Casspi’s injury gave that a bit of a hit, but the additions of Nick Young and rookie Jordan Bell to the rotation give them some more pop off the bench.

Bell has played consistent rotation minutes for Golden State through the first four games of the season and has been solid. On Monday night, the rookie big man decided to have some fun late in the blowout with a ridiculous off-the-backboard alley-oop to himself on a fastbreak.

The dunk stunned everyone in the arena, with even his teammates not believing what he just did — just look at Durant’s reaction. However, for some this was a little bit too much fun, as Mavs coach Rick Carlisle and others were not pleased with the display in that situation. Bell’s dunk created plenty of debate about sportsmanship and what players should or shouldn’t do, and on Tuesday, LeBron James chimed in and explained that if people want players to play hard for 48 minutes then they really shouldn’t get upset about something like this.

“I mean, listen, coach is always telling us to play till the end, play till the final buzzer,” LeBron said. “But we also have a code as well in our league that, you talk bout no showboating. I don’t know man. Listen, we’re all men. Stop me from dunking. We’re not trying to hurt nobody. Trying to play hard until the final buzzer. Would it have been OK if he had laid the ball up? Get mad because he threw it off the glass and caught it? Would he have been mad if he threw it off the glass and missed it? There wouldn’t have been no conversation. So, you play the game until it’s over. Yeah he threw it off the glass, dunked it, so what?”

Steve Kerr reportedly tried to apologize to Carlisle and probably had a little chat with Bell, but there’s no difference on the scoreboard in him laying that up or dunking it flamboyantly as James points out. If nothing else, it gave fans something exciting to see that stuck around for the end of a 30-point blowout.

Now, the one point I will disagree with James on is that if he’d missed the self alley-oop dunk it wouldn’t have been a conversation. That would have absolutely been discussed, laughed about, and, to be honest, probably more widely criticized. If you’re going to showboat, you better succeed, because if not you’re going to get roasted for it and look a little bit like an a-hole.