LeBron James fans are growing impatient with the NBA star after he’s missed over 20 games from March to April due to an ankle injury.
On May 10, he uploaded a video of himself and his family doing the “Go Daddy Go” TikTok Dance. The video started off with his daughter leading the dance, as she has done in the past, and encouraged her family to follow along by doing this fast hopping motion. James, who is the last to go, can be seen at the end of the video hopping along.
“🤦🏾♂️🤦🏾♂️🤦🏾♂️🤦🏾♂️🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 #JamesGang👑,” the Lakers star wrote in the caption. Impatient fans took that opportunity to call James out about his sprained ankle. “That ankle looks fine to me,” wrote one person while another said, “the ankle looking good come play.” Someone else hilariously said, “hop your way on the court now we need u😈😈.”
Other fans who were coming from a more concerned standpoint commented, “Watch that ankle Bron 😅,” and “Chill out bron you gon hurt yourself.” The video generated over five million views and received over one million likes.
There was a good possibility that Lakers’ fans might get the chance to see James on the court for the May 11 game against the Knicks until he opted for another day of rest early Tuesday afternoon. Coach Frank Vogel gave some insight on how James did in practice and shared that he was able to do all of the drills. He said, “We did some drill work. We did some contrived scrimmages and we did a short, full scrimmage. And he did all of it.”
James initially missed six weeks of games after injuring it in a game against Atlanta Hawks. After being out for about a month and a half he tried to make a return for the games against the Toronto Raptors and the Sacramento Kings but began to feel soreness in his ankle again and decided to take a rest for four more games.
The team has other players that are suffering from injuries as well, such as Dennis Schröder, Jared Dudley, and more. While Anthony Davis has only recently returned to the court after missing two months with a lower leg injury, the team is hoping to get James back for extra support before the playoffs take place later this month.
The playoffs are actually not a sure thing for the fading Lakers, who are 3-7 in their past 10 games and in seventh place in the Western Conference with a week remaining in the regular season. This season the NBA is carrying over an innovation from last year’s pandemic-shortened season, the play-in tournament. This format of a two-game tournament between the seventh- through 10th-place teams actually could see the defending champions eliminated from the playoffs before they begin, which apparently does not sit well with LeBron.
On Sunday, May 2, the Lakers small forward, stung by a loss to the Toronto Raptors and watching his team slide closer to being thrust into the do-or-die play-in tournament, said to reporters about the play-in format, “Whoever came up with that s–t needs to be fired.”
James is known for having a phenomenal memory, so perhaps he was not surprised to see social media users bring up his comments from last year when the play-in format was used for the first time and his Lakers did not have to play in it: “One thing you can’t just do is go straight to the playoffs, because it discredits the 60-plus games that guys had fighting for that position,” he said of the innovation in March 2020 when it was first proposed.
Sports pundits and social media users called out LeBron for this apparent flip-flop, but if the Lakers can’t get healthy soon the biggest flip-flop will be the contrast between this season and the team’s drive to the championship last season.
