This is one of those situations where both of these things can be true.
LeBron totally meant to hit him, but he didn’t mean to bloody his face.
Bron has already moved on to dealing with Pacers fans, but Stewart who just got back from suspension decided to make one last comment on it.
“Rob [Pelinka] called me. I missed his call,” James told ESPN of the Lakers vice president of basketball operations and general manager dialing in the bad news. “As soon as when I checked my phone and it was a missed call, I was like, ‘I know I’m suspended.’
“I mean, it’s some bulls—. But whatever.”
“There was a boxout on the free throw line. His elbow got kind of high, it got me — if you look, if you watch the film — it got me off balanced a little bit, and his elbow lifted my arm, and I basically tried to swim move, swim down on him, on his arm,” James said. “And when I swung down on his arm, he got off balance and the left side of my hand grazed his face. And I knew right away. So, I knew right away I had caught some part of his head. So, I went over to apologize to him, and obviously, you guys saw what happened after that. But definitely accidental.”
“I watched the film,” Stewert said. “Me, personally, like I said, I didn’t feel like it was an accident. But this is my last time addressing it. My main focus right now is on my team and my teammates, getting back to playing basketball.
“I’m not going to let that define who I am. I’m going to let what Detroit drafted me for define who I am and the way I play basketball.”
Who do you believe?
Flip the pages to see Stewart’s interview and the video of the elbow.