LeBron James Fires Back at Phil Jackson for ‘Posse’ Comment
By MIKE VORKUNOVNOV. 15, 2016
The New York Times
Phil Jackson’s description of LeBron James’s business partners as his “posse” in an interview published by ESPN on Monday drew an angry response from James, who took offense at the racial connotation of the word.
The dispute between Jackson, the Knicks’ president, and James, who plays for the Cleveland Cavaliers and is one of the N.B.A.’s most visible players, also left Knicks forward Carmelo Anthony in the uncomfortable position of having to answer questions about a sudden feud involving one of his bosses and one of his good friends.
The ESPN interview was a wide-ranging Q. and A. in which Jackson talked about the state of the Knicks, the criticism of his management of the team, and his relationship with Anthony. But James took exception with Jackson’s description of the group of friends who travel and work with him as his “posse.”
James and Maverick Carter, his close friend and business partner, both took offense at Jackson’s use of the word. Carter told ESPN.com he was bothered because of the idea that Jackson said it because James and his friends are “young and black, he can use that word.” James said he had lost respect for Jackson as a result of the comments.
“We see the success that we have, but then there is always someone that lets you know how far we still have to go as African-Americans,” James told reporters in Cleveland. “I don’t believe that Phil Jackson would have used that term if he was doing business with someone else and working with another team or if he was working with anybody in sports that was owning a team that wasn’t African-American and had a group of guys around them that didn’t agree with what they did. I don’t think he would have called them a posse. But it just shows how far we have to go. But it won’t stop us from doing what we need to do as a group.”
James, Carter and two other high school friends, Rich Paul and Randy Mims, founded L.R.M.R. Management Company a decade ago. The agency handles marketing and representation duties for James and other N.B.A. players. The company has been successful since its inception, positioning James as one of the top athletes-turned-entrepreneurs of his generation.
In the ESPN interview, Jackson, responding to a question about James’s decision to leave the Miami Heat, and whether he could imagine Magic Johnson leaving Pat Riley and the Los Angeles Lakers or Michael Jordan leaving Jackson and the Chicago Bulls, turned his response back around to James.
“When LeBron was playing with the Heat, they went to Cleveland and he wanted to spend the night,” Jackson told ESPN.com. “They don’t do overnights. Teams just don’t. So now Spoelstra” — a reference to the Heat coach, Erik Spoelstra — “has to text Riley and say, ‘What do I do in this situation?’ And Pat, who has iron-fist rules, answers, ‘You are on the plane, you are with this team.’ You can’t hold up the whole team because you and your mom and your posse want to spend an extra night in Cleveland.”Photo
The Knicks’ Carmelo Anthony, right, with James, a good friend. Anthony said that he considered “posse” a loaded term and that he would not want his group of friends to be referred to that way.CreditJulio Cortez/Associated Press
Jackson did not respond to James’s remarks Tuesday; he left Knicks practice without speaking to members of the news media and did not respond to an email.
While posse is defined as a group of friends or associates, Keith Gilyard, a professor of English and African-American studies at Penn State, said he could understand why James took offense. The cultural definition of the word has shifted toward defining drug cartels or, in cultural terms, the group of hangers-on that surround a celebrity.
“What we’re talking about is a rhetorical moment, and one of the things that’s interesting about rhetoric is sort of the study of who can say what to whom and under what conditions — or can say what about whom and under what conditions,” Gilyard said. “The word in and of itself is never neutral. It never means the same in all contexts.”
And when the word is used publicly, as by Jackson, instead of in a private conversation, its connotation changes, Gilyard said.
“When you have an official or executive that uses that language that makes its way into mainstream circulation, it has a different meaning,” he added. “Meaning shifts depending on contexts.”
With Jackson unavailable, it left Anthony, a close friend of James’s, to answer questions about the subject. Anthony agreed that he considered “posse” a loaded term, and he said that he would not want his group of friends or family to be referred that way. But Anthony declined to ascribe any assumptions or intent to Jackson.
“Do I think he meant it any kind of way?” Anthony said. “I really don’t know. I don’t think he did. I would hope that he didn’t.
“Sometimes Phil just says things and he says the first thing that comes to mind and then probably is in his office right now regretting it. I don’t know. When it comes to Phil, you just never know what’s going to be said, what’s coming out. It depends on who’s listening. People take it the right way or people take it the wrong way. You just never know when it comes to Phil.
“I just don’t understand him talking about LeBron right now, in November. I don’t understand that.”
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