Let’s face it, LeBron James gets a lot of crap. I understand the fans in Cleveland hating his guts for the way he left them. But it is baffling the way people in Boise and Topeka hate him. When we reported that he got the team to take a hoodie picture in honor of Trayvon Martin, the mini-Skips said it was too late or that it was a publicity stunt. It’ll be hard for people to not think what LeBron did for some military personnel was pretty cool.
During a recent road trip, the team was flying from Miami to Portland but encountered some headwind that required them to make a stop in Oklahoma City to refuel. While there, a crew of military personnel was in the same terminal also waiting to be have their aircraft refueled. Some of the crewmen decided to approach security to see if they could take some pictures with the players. Security told them no (like they are prone to do), but the exchange caught the eye of James.
The story from the Oklahoman
Maybe LeBron could overhear the conversation, or perhaps he could just tell by their body language what was going on. Either way, he piped up.
“Hey, hey,” he said, “any of these military guys can take a picture with us.”
He turned to his teammates.
“You guys get up,” he told them.
He turned to the servicemen.
“Get your camera up,” he said.
He started to wave the servicemen over but noticed that some of the players weren’t yet on their feet.
“Hey, everybody get up,” he said. “Get in a circle here. Anybody that wants their picture taken with us, we’ll do it.”
And that’s exactly what they did. Any of the four or five dozen helicopter crewmen who wanted a photo got one. Not all of them did, but LeBron and his teammates posed with each and every one of them who asked.
If people are going to criticize everything you are doing, just make sure you are doing good things. Cynics can say that he was doing it for publicity, and maybe he was, but the fact remains that he did something nice for some soldiers. He gave them an awesome experience to share with their family and friends and a cool story to tell when sitting around if they are deployed overseas.
