About

Mechanic Lebron refers to a photoshopped image of Lebron James sporting a mustache with a cigarette dangling out of his mouth and one behind his ear. The image became popular after James himself shared a version of the meme with a caption making him sound like an auto mechanic.

Origin

On November 19th, 2015, Twitter user @Brendan_Tobin tweeted a video of James discussing his time with the Cleveland Cavaliers and apparently expressing regret about leaving the Miami Heat (shown below).

Spread

On November 21st, 2015, Twitter user @TankTopPapi^[1] tweeted the image along with a caption that made James sound like an auto-mechanic, gaining over 2,700 retweets and 1,400 likes (shown below, left). The following day, James himself shared it to his Instagram^[2] where it gained over 267,000 likes (shown below, right).

James' response was covered by several blogs, including SB Nation^[3] and Fox Sports.^[4] The meme saw a resurgence in 2017 where people would imagine Lebron listing potential opponents before saying the Cavs would beat them. For example, Twitter user @cfaix15^[5] posted a compilation of such memes from around Twitter (examples shown below).

In 2018, USA Today noted that Lebron appeared to unintentionally recreate the meme when he said "It doesn't matter to me if I'm a 6th seed, 3 seed, 2 seed, 8 seed…If I come into your building for a Game 1, it will be very challenging."^[6]

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References