LeBron James faced heavy criticism over the comments on white people he made during the 2018 premiere of his HBO show "The Shop." It was later fact-checked by different news outlets as having been misconstrued.
A quote by King James on not wanting to do anything with white people on the first episode of his show in August 2018 resurfaced in June 2020 on social media. The posts passed the four-time NBA champion as being anti-white, with some netizens calling him out for it.
"I don't want nothing to do with white people. I don't believe they want anything to do with me. I don't want no (white) friends. It's me and my boys," one post on Facebook with a screenshot of LeBron on his show read .
It drew biting reactions from other users of the platform.
"Deny it all you want, but racism goes both ways. One doesn't justify the other, it just perpetuates it," one user wrote.
"I hope the White Boys will quit paying to watch him play! What an idiot!" another said.
Other publishers immediately reacted to the posts by releasing the full transcripts of what LeBron has said, saying his comments were taken out of context and what he said was his initial fear and thoughts as a teenager spreading his wings both as an athlete and individual in a predominantly white setting in high school.
Fact-checkers later clarified that, indeed, such were the circumstances behind the words that he said and should not be viewed as spreading anti-white sentiments.
"I went to an all-white high school, Catholic high school, so when I first went to the ninth grade in the high school, I was all of a sudden like 'I'm not f—ing with white people'. My whole, I was so institutionalized, growing up in the hood, it's like 'they don't f— with us, they don't want us to succeed'", he originally said .
"So, I'm like, 'I'm going to this school to play ball and that's it. I don't want nothing to do with white people, I don't believe that they want anything to do with my — it's me and my boys, we going to high school together and we here to hoop.' So that was like my initial thoughts and my initial shock to, like, white America when I was 14 years old, for the first time in my life," LeBron added.
High school for LeBron was St. Vincent-St. Mary in Akron, Ohio, where he and his friends, Sian Cotton, Dru Joyce III, Willie McGee and Romeo Travis, attended from 1999 to 2023 and dominated the competition, winning the Ohio state championship in their final year.
LeBron's friend and business partner, Maverick Carter, who was also featured in the episode, said that it did not take long for the four-time NBA MVP to warm up to his white schoolmates and become friends with them, hanging out and having a great time.
As he further grew in the sport of basketball and life in general and has a better understanding of race issues in the United States, LeBron has seen some improvements but admits that as a society, they are still far from the ideal setting.
One of the incidents that made him realize that happened a year before his words about his relationship with white people were ever uttered. It was when his house in Los Angeles was vandalized with racial slurs.
"Being black in America, it's tough. And we've got a long way to go as a society for us as African-Americans until we feel equal in America… It just goes to show that racism will always be part of the world, part of America and that hate, especially for African-Americans, is living every day," LeBron shared about the issue.
With racial issues nowhere near being ended, the important role that LeBron and other athletes play in keeping the conversation on it alive and progressing cannot be denied.
This story was originally published by Basketball Network on Mar 16, 2026, where it first appeared in the Off The Court section. Add Basketball Network as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
