lebron james in gq

The LeBron James hate train has chugged along nicely through this NBA offseason (all six weeks of it!). This week’s stop? It’s a GQ piece, part of an ode du roi in their upcoming issue. James, never one to let gasoline get in the way of a good fire, didn’t mince words as he discussed his early impressions of Cleveland, where he played seven years for his “home” city.

James on how a kid could from Akron, located only thirty minutes from Cleveland, could grow up rooting for Chicago and Jordan: “It’s not far, but it is far. And Clevelanders, because they were the bigger-city kids when we were growing up, looked down on us.… So we didn’t actually like Cleveland. We hated Cleveland growing up. There’s a lot of people in Cleveland we still hate to this day.” –J.R. Moehringer/GQ, via Waiting For Next Year.

I get that. Maybe it’s an Ohio thing, but I don’t root for the success of my surrounding communities, either. LeBron and I have so much in common! But I did like what he had to say about people in The Mistake On The Lake burning his jerseys.

“Maybe the ones burning my jersey,” he says, “were never LeBron fans anyway.”

Sage wisdom, good sir. Sage indeed.