Lebron speaks on Memphis!

Is what Lebron said about Memphis and Wisconsin so bad?

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:15

Welcome back everybody to another edition of the Free Agent Fans Podcast. It's Mike Jr. coming at you guys, and today is what? Solo. Solo Sunday. But I'm not actually completely solo. I have my niece Kyla here today with me. We're going to do another topic later, but you guys, it probably won't air until the next Sunday. But right now, we're talking about these comments that LeBron James made. And everybody's been on it. I'm trying to get more active on stuff that's popping in the news now when I do my solo Sunday. So today I was scrolling around and I saw all this back and forth about what LeBron said. LeBron did this, LeBron did that. So apparently, I'm going to go to a website and I'm going to read what was said. So I'm getting this story from Clutch Points website. Well, it's off of Yahoo. The story is about Clutch Points. It says LeBron James reacts to controversial Memphis comments. So, a little quick rundown of what happened. LeBron James made headlines last week after he dissed the Memphis Grizzlies, suggesting that they should change their NBA team city. The Los Angeles Lakers store caused an uproar with his latest comments about Memphis, Tennessee, which is a largely black populated city, as many residents took offense to the NBA star's suggestion while LeBron was playing golf on an April 2nd episode of the YouTube series Bob Does Sports. He said the Grizzlies should permanently move to Nashville and also also share similar sentiments about Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Wisconsin, which is home to the Milwaukee Bucks. Now I don't watch this YouTube series, Bob Does Sports, but I did see the clips online, and I saw that most of, well, all of the people that I saw online, it was just LeBron and the rest of them were Caucasian males. That's what it looked like. So I bring that up because that's important later, because all of the sentiment and all of the complaints I'm hearing and some of the backlash I'm hearing is that, you know, a lot of people are saying now that, oh, he shouldn't be dissing a majority black city in front of a bunch of white people with the polarization of America being in the state that it is right now. So let me read a little bit more of this and then I'll give you guys my point of view. So here's a little bit more from Clutch Points, this story. You think, this is what LeBron said, you think I want to do that being in Memphis on a random ass Thursday? I'm not like the first guy to even talk about it in the NBA. He said, You guys have to move. Let's go over to Nashville. You got Vanderbilt over there, you've got NASCAR, you've got a stadium. Don't they got a hockey team too? Yes, they do, the Nashville Predators. So many fans shared their outrage for LeBron's comments online with one fan writing on X. Memphis is just like Baltimore and Chicago. It's a historic, historical black city that was stomping ground for black civil rights for well over a century. They're underfunded on purpose as punishment to this very day. Sad to see you guys give excuses to LeBron. That's what uh someone on X said. Didn't get didn't give a uh his title or handle on there. But anyway, Stephen A. Smith, who has had a tumultuous relationship with the NBA store, also called him out prediction a predominantly black city in front of white dudes. So here's what Stephen A. said. We can't throw shade on LeBron until we take into account, knowing that 63% of the people there are black, knowing that they need this team to continue to help fuel the economy, the local economy there, as opposed to big up in Nashville and saying, Why don't you just go there? Not thinking of the citizens at all, Smith said on first take. LeBron has since responded to those comments and clarified what he meant regarding some of the NBA fans perceiving it as trying to punish a majority black city. Here's LeBron's response. Did I say I don't like black people? I'm 41 years old, and there's two cities I don't like playing in right now, Milwaukee and Memphis. What is the problem with that? I don't like going home either, and I'm from there, the four-time NBA champion told ESPN's Dave McMinneman. So, that was LeBron's, oh, and according to this article also, this is not the first time LeBron has received backlash from mentioning Memphis. Back in January, he released a teal colorway of his Nike LeBron 23 Honor the King sneaker in dedication to Dr. Martin Luther King with the heel also reading equality. While the sentiment on the surface doesn't call for a negative reaction or discomfort, it was that the Lakers star made tribute to Memphis, Lorraine Motel, which is where Dr. King was killed. So, okay. I get it. First off, you know, I had this discussion with my wife. I had it with False G over the phone, and I'll I want to get, we may revisit this topic when I get the free agent fans, all the fans, all the free agent fans together. When we're all podcasting together again, I may revisit this topic, but it'll be kind of old, so I don't know. But it the the topic and LeBron's comments may be old, but the underlying discussion about this won't, it will not be old because I have a problem with people jumping on LeBron about this. And not just because I am a LeBron fan, but I will tell you why. I feel the way I feel. I understand people, you know, I hear a lot of people saying, oh, like Stephen A. always in front of white dudes. This in a predominantly black city in front of white dudes. Number one. That ain't news to those white dudes. They probably already been saying what LeBron said about Memphis. Memphis is shitty. It doesn't. There's a lot of crime, violence going on there. And now, you know, before you start jumping on me about, I'm from St. Louis, so you want to talk about downtowns that need to be cleaned up. I know exactly what Memphis is going through because we have a potentially downtown area that could really be nice, but we we got some work to do. And apparently Memphis does too, some work to do around this stadium. Now I went to Memphis a few years ago, maybe more than a few, probably about maybe five, six, let me see. It would have been more than that, maybe eight years ago, because I think my son was still in high school. And I took my son and my nephews, my three nephews, out to we went out to Memphis and we went in, we saw the Lorraine Motel, we saw the it was a black history museum that talked about slavery, and one Luther King went over and we saw where the guy was sitting in the building across the street that shot and killed Dr. King, and it made my sons and nephews cry just to see that. Very nice, very nice to it. And then we went to a Memphis Grizzlies game. So, and at that time, and we walked Bill Street during the daytime, of course. And wasn't all that bad, but I would say probably about a it was it was actually very nice. About a year or two after that is when I started hearing Memphis in the news about all the crime and the robbing. So I don't know if we missed that window, but I'm glad we did. But it's it, I haven't heard the same, well, I've heard a lot of negativity about it recently since our visit. And actually, that game that we went to, it was Dirk New Whiskey. He was on it was his last season in the NBA. So I got to see Dirk play. He played for maybe like five minutes in that game. I forget. Yeah, it was the Grizzlies against, I guess he was still with Dallas. And he played like five minutes and they took him out. But you know, the crowd was like, oh, Dirk, Dirk, wanted more Dirk. But anyway, the city was nice. We we enjoyed ourselves, had a pretty decent time, no problems. Didn't see any crime or anything. But like I said, a couple of years later, I started hearing, you know, the crime was bad, extremely bad in Memphis. And hearing back to the topic at hand, LeBron's comments, and I got a little heated and frustrated because you know I was having the conversation with my wife, but I wasn't heated and frustrated with her. I was just heated and frustrated about the situation of what was being said. And it really bothers me that a lot of people were saying, oh, he shouldn't be saying that in front of a bunch of white dudes. Number one, does that make it not true? Well, actually, this would be number two, because my number one was first, those white dudes probably was already saying that before they they didn't have to get on the golf court with LeBron to know that Memphis has a crime problem. Secondly, does it make it not true just because he said it in front of a bunch of white dudes? If he said it in a room full of blacks, it's still true. They have a problem. And he doesn't like going there because of that problem. And he didn't specifically say the crime or whatever in these articles, but he said he doesn't like playing there. And number three, he wasn't the first to say this. I I've seen videos of uh Draymond Green online. I've seen other NBA players saying that, eh, I don't like going to Memphis. You know, I don't like, I don't like playing there. They say the stadium is nice, and it was. When we went there, the stadium was nice. But one of them said, I can't remember who it was. I don't know if it's, I don't want to misquote anybody, but I saw videos, Kevin Durant, all these guys, but I don't know who it was. One of them said that you could potentially be walking from the stadium to your hotel room across the street, get robbed. Know all about that? Try going to a Cortin's game. You have to point. So far away, St. Louis Cortinum baseball game, potentially you're gonna get robbed. So nobody wants to go down there and take that risk. You know, if you're a fan of, let's say LeBron does come there, because I will admit, when I was getting these tickets for all these years ago, I was looking to see when the Lakers was there because I wanted to see LeBron. It was just too expensive. There was a date, but it was way too expensive. So I didn't do it. But I figure, okay, Dallas, that's good enough. See Dirk on his last is outgoing tour. But yeah, you know, you don't want to, if you know that it's dangerous, if those reports had been out then, I wouldn't even win. I would have gone up to Indiana because I was just, I usually like to take the kids, you know, somewhere local that we could drive, four hours away or somewhere close to St. Louis that we could drive. And Memphis was only four hours away. It was like three, actually three and a half on a good day, if you, you know, depends on who driving. And so that's what I did. I know now, I wouldn't go there now. Hearing what's happening there and all that's going on, you know, yeah. I mean, I'm from St. Louis and, you know, I know how to navigate myself around crime, but I'm not trying to go to somebody else's city and have to deal with it. If I go to your city, I want to enjoy myself and see the sights and, you know, not have to really worry about. I know it's it's everywhere. It can happen anywhere, anytime, but I don't want to have to have that on the forefront of my mind. So that ticked me off, you know, the fact that people are tripping off of the fact that he said it in front of a bunch of white people. White dudes. How about this, y'all? So that he won't even have to say it, say it at all. How about we start cleaning up our own shit for lack of better words? How about we clean up our own neighborhoods, clean up our, you know, start looking out. You everybody want to talk about how historic Memphis is and this and that, but look at what we're doing to it. We shitting on it. We shitting on that historical background, that historical land, Dr. Martin Luther King's name every day. Some of these little Y-Ns, y'all wake up and y'all shit on that legacy. And all the older people can do is complain about somebody else coming out saying something about it, when in fact, y'all the same ones sitting up talking about, oh, no snitching. Snitches get stitches. How about you start snitching and telling on some of these clowns that are down here doing this crime and making your city look bad? So guess what? Maybe if you did that and the downtown Memphis got cleaned up, maybe other businesses will want to come in there and do some things because, and then that way, this Memphis Grizzlies won't be your only source of uh uh economic boost to that area, to your city. How about that? Because it can't happen. Because guess what, people? Whether Memphis was, I mean, they could be the safest city in America. Okay, that NBA owner can move that team at any time. He can move it wherever he so chooses. If somebody else, if St. Louis came and pitched, hey, we can do this, we can give you a deal here, you come move here, blah, blah, blah. He can move that team. Now, there may be some voting or whatever have to go on, but I mean, these guys are our buddies and they know it's about the money. He ain't caring nothing about, oh, well, I'm doing this for, you know, I can't speak for that owner, but as far as money goes, as far as the schematics of life goes, ain't nobody really trying to care about the fact that, oh, this is great for their economy. Especially when y'all ain't doing nothing to do anything for y'all's economy anyway. And you can you can jump on thefreeagentfans.com, that's our website, and you can you can bring the smoke over the heat, whatever. But I feel like I can speak on this because the exact same thing is happening in St. Louis. We ain't doing nothing to build up our downtown. These little Y-ins running around with guns all over the streets, just walking down now. They're trying, you know, they're making a curfew and all that. St. Louis just now starting to do something, but this stuff had been going on for years. And yeah, people didn't want to come to the Fox. And we had a nice theater down there, and you had people that didn't want to come to the Fox and do things like that because of the crime. So make that make sense. So when you start taking pride in this stuff that you have there and want to see it get better, then you know, start snitching, start doing something. And even if you're a criminal, if you decide that's what I'm gonna do, you know, okay, yeah, uh, well, there's economic things holding us back in a predominantly black city, we still can't get ahead because people won't give us a job. That's a problem right there that we need to figure out anyway. But you go to two or three job interviews, so at what point do you decide, okay, well, I'm just gonna do crime? Well, if that's the case, then do it somewhere else. If if the Grizzlies is your only, then you know, it's boosting your economy, let's try to keep that as an economic boost and let's go do crime somewhere else. If that's if that's your choice in life, that, you know, okay, I'm just gonna have to do crime, do it somewhere else, you know, and stop jumping on people like LeBron and all these guys that say stuff that's it's just true, man. Who cares who he said it in front of? You know, it ain't gonna change the fact that it's true. So I think black people in there in the black community, we get too focused on who we around when we say stuff as opposed to what's being said. And he didn't say anything that wasn't true. He said he don't like going there. And if you anybody that Google, if you Google why would somebody not like going to Memphis, the obvious is gonna show up. So black people do better. You know, put some respect on Martin Luther King's legacy, put some respect on that Grizzly Stadium, put some respect on the owners, the players. And how about this? How about some of them NBA players, you know, and and not to discredit, you know, all the stuff that LeBron has done for Cleveland, putting in programs and things like that to help kids and youth in Cleveland, why don't somebody on the Memphis Grizzlies do that for Memphis? Start trying to build that up. How about that? And instead of everybody focusing on the fact that he said he don't like going playing there and just saying what many others have said before him, NBA stars, where's that at? Why don't somebody, is it an NBA player in the league right now that's from Memphis that wanna take up that mantle, start, you know, get these kids something else to do to maybe deter them from crying. How about that? There's another option. Instead of just jumping on, oh, well, LeBron said this, and LeBron said that, and Stephen A. Smith, man, come on, man, you done flip-flop from Coon to, oh, I'm black again. Now, I will say this about Stephen A. I am a fan of Stephen A, but I can say this about him, you know, because I've seen it. You know, I've I've I've heard Stephen A make some comments. I'm like, oh, that's Coonish. But I do respect Stephen A for the fact that he does stand on what he says. So, you know, uh, there's something to that. You know, like everybody voted for Trump, you know, give Stephen A that same, you know, because Trump keep it real. He said it gives Stephen A that same, that same energy that you give Trump for being real. He stands on his, he stands on what he says. I may not agree with it all the time, but he does stand on what he says. And I don't have to agree with it, because I'm pretty sure a lot of people are gonna not agree with some of the stuff that I had to say. Because y'all did this to Whoopi Goldberg when she said, I don't support you because you black, I support you because you're right. Y'all got on her about that, y'all got on Raven Simone, because what did Raven say? She said something about uh being black or something like that. I can't remember exactly, but I have to Google it. But everybody started jumping on Raven, y'all jumped on Bill Cosby when he told y'all, you know, pretty for lack of better words, Bill Cosby said, niggas, get y'all shit together. And y'all jumped on him for that because he was saying what's true. You know, stop. Stop being losers and committing crime and being lazy, taking the easy way out. And I ain't saying all y'all lazy. So that's another thing. Oh, what are you saying? You know, but y'all know it's out there, you know, and if you want to play that card of, well, it ain't just us, you know, it's lazy people in every race, yes, but we ain't talking about every race. Y'all jumping on LeBron because he's a black man saying something in front of a bunch of white people, so let's stick to where it is. We can't, we can't straddle the fence now and jump on, well, well, it's lazy people in this, uh, oh, they're everywhere, it's this, this, that. No, we're talking about us. Black people. When I say us, it's because I am African American. And you guys want to just chur each other down for saying something that's true. And this dude has done more for Cleveland than probably all these people jumping online on X, Twitter, whatever the hell, talking about what he said in Memphis. He probably done more than you would ever do. What are you doing besides sitting on your hands waiting for something to go viral online so you can comment about it? Why don't you get up and go down there and start looking? You know, start, what was the hell's ain't what was the hell's ain't whatever they had in New York that watched for crime. Why don't you go down there and do that? Do something. Yeah, and you want your city to change, you want it to be better. Tell on Pookie. You know Pookie over there cooking meth or selling weed or whatever, well, weed legal now, but selling crack or whatever Pooky doing. How about you tell on Pookie? Because guess what? Pookie's gonna be that dude that goes downtown and shoot somebody. Eventually. But no, that's just that's too much. That's too much like right. So it's easier to sit online and complain about LeBron because LeBron has a platform and he's famous and he's this, he's that. Y'all gotta start taking account for yourselves. And he did it to Charles Barkley. Charles Barkley got smoked, you know, and Charles let stuff come out of his mouth. And I don't think I I don't know, I have to go back and listen to all of Charles' quotes, but I don't think I heard one of his quotes that I didn't agree with yet. So, but I mean, get y'all steps together and stop whining and complaining because I'm all for it. Yeah, move that team to Nashville. So what? If y'all ain't doing right by it, you know what I'm saying? I mean, I we lost, we lost the Rams here, and it had nothing to do with the fact that we had a lot of crime down there. Conky wanted to move that team to go make more money in LA, and that's exactly what he did. So even if we would have cleaned up the crime here in St. Louis, that team was gone. So don't put it all on that, oh, this is our economic boost or whatever. You know, there's so many ways to have an economic boost. Like you could have conventions coming, you can have people, tourism, wanting to come to your city, all you gotta do is clean it up. I go downtown St. Louis all the time and I look around like, man, so much potential being lost here because ain't nobody cleaning it up. You know, you need to go to other cities like Houston and Kansas City that that fixed theirs, because Kansas City was in the same place that downtown St. Louis was, is right now, and they fixed theirs up. And it's generating revenue. So it can be done. But everybody gotta do their part and stop whining and complaining and focusing on what somebody else said and do what you can do to make that difference. You know, I mean, yeah, I get it. We all polarized right now because of the whole, oh, Trump is dividing everybody and, you know, pushing everything apart or whatever, whatever the case may be. But if you sit and you focus on that, you are not going to move forward or you're not gonna get anything accomplished. And that's what we do way too often is we focus on that and we don't want it to be said. Like I can't remember exactly what my wife said, but when we were discussing it, she said something to the effect that, okay, let's uh But yeah, we know it's true, but let's it let's not talk about it or whatever. And I said something to the fact, okay, so if we know it's if we know somebody's m molesting a child and we don't talk about it, that don't make it any less true. They still doing it. So in the black community, we gotta stop worrying about who we talk about this or that in front of and just start talking about the problem. How we gonna fix the problem. Because ignoring it, it ain't gonna get it fixed. It's just gonna, is the problem still gonna be there? And all that not talking about it, and oh, we don't wanna say this, oh, hush up, y'all. Here come the white folk. We don't want to say this around them. They already know. Especially if you think and, you know, it's the most ignorant thing that I can hear is that if you think that they're the ones that's keeping you down, then who gives a crap if you talk about it in front of them? Because they already know what they're doing, if that's how you feel. So talk about it and start doing something about it. Don't start beating each other up. That's just another way to divide and conquer. Because now everybody upset with LeBron, everybody in Memphis. Oh, LeBron said this. Well, how about this? Memphis, how about you losers fix y'all city? How about that? Your team sucks, your city sucks right now. Do something about it. Fix it. Start doing something. Put something into it. You know, get some of the basketball players, reach out, start doing something. You know, and yes, I'm saying it. Yes, I said y'all suck, because St. Louis sucks right now too. So, I mean, you can come back, but you ain't gonna hurt my feelings because I feel the same way about my own city. And what am I doing about it? Absolutely nothing right now. So, you know, it ain't uh just me jumping on here, beating y'all up. We all need to start doing something. Now, I will say this, I will tell, I ain't I ain't got that no-snitching policy. I don't give a F about you because they ain't stopped making them guns when you got yours. So, you know, if it comes to that, that's what it comes to. But we got to start standing up and, you know, saying something, doing something, instead of just beating up on our stars and our uh, you know, it's just another way to divide. Divide and conquer, keep us separated. So think about that, Memphis. And when you're upset with LeBron and you're posting on X, how about you post something on how we can fix that? You know, to where LeBron never says it about Memphis again, where his next comment about Memphis is, man, I tell you what, towards the end, I really like coming to Memphis because they really turned that thing around. They fixed that bad boy. How about that? You know, make it somewhere proud. You know, you got all that history there. Music, all that. Uh Martin Luther King, Lorraine, all that wonderful history. And what are y'all doing with it? You know what I'm saying? Y'all just crapping on it with violence and all that anger and you know, just just constant nonsense. And it don't have to be that way. So think about that the next time before you start posting and stay dividing yourselves from each other. Sit back and think. Is this what I really want to do? Is this really gonna help? Or am I looking, could I be looking at this in a different, different light or a different direction? And if you do that, you'll probably see that, okay, maybe I'm focusing on the wrong thing here. And focusing on who LeBron's saying that he's in a room full of white dudes, and he's saying this about a 63% black city. What are y'all saying about us as black people, that we can have a 63% black city and yet it's one of the worst cities nobody wants to come to? What does that say about us? Regardless of what you think is oh, well, yeah, they systematically keeping us down or this and that. At what point are we gonna stop using that as an excuse to be terrible? To be horrible to people, to be horrible to each other, and have horrible cities. Go to the website, check us out, thefreeagentfans.com. That's all I'm gonna say about this. If we decide to do this again with the fellas, I'll let you guys know when we'll post it, but y'all have a blessed, and this is Easter Sunday, and y'all brought out the profanity in me. Y'all have a blessed and safe Easter Sunday. Check us out at the on the website. Peace up.