About

LeBron Is A Bitch refers to a quote that appeared on a woman's shirt in a photo she took with former Celtic player Rajon Rondo in 2012. After the picture spread, it has stuck with hecklers of LeBron James, reaching a new high in the wake of his controversial comments on the 2019 Hong Kong protests.

Origin

The first instance of the phrase "LeBron is a Bitch" occurred in 2010 when comedian Mike Polk performed a song with the title (shown below).

Spread

On October 31st, 2012, Boston Celtic Rajon Rondo was seen taking a picture with a girl whose shirt said "LeBron is a Bitch."^[1]

The phrase became a go-to taunt from basketball fans who were not fans of James. One of the most popular examples of this occurred after Game 2 of the 2015 NBA Finals, when a Warriors fan heckled him as he walked off the court by shouting, "Hey LeBron, how does it feel to be a pussy-ass bitch?" (shown below).

Hong Kong Protests

In the wake of the Hong Kong Protests Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey tweeted and quickly deleted a post supporting Hong Kong. This led to heavy criticism and financial sanctions from the Chinese government and Chinese financial sponsors on the Rockets and the NBA. On October 14th, 2019, LeBron James spoke to the media for the first time since the tweet sparked the firestorm, and stated Morey's comments were uneducated.

"I don't want to get into a [verbal] feud with Daryl Morey, but I believe he wasn't educated on the situation at hand, and he spoke. And so many people could have been harmed not only financially, physically, emotionally, spiritually. So just be careful what we tweet and say and we do, even though, yes, we do have freedom of speech, but there can be a lot of negative that comes with that, too."

This caused a wide backlash from different groups on Twitter and r/NBA on Reddit, causing many to post old stills or videos from the 2012 meme saying "They had it right" and resulting in the "top post of all time"^[3] calling out LeBron James for selling out and not taking a stand for civil liberties. The Hong Kong protesters themselves took part in the meme, wearing images of LeBron crying as masks to avoid China's facial recognition towers.

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