LeBron James raised eyebrows here in the Bay Area when he was spotted coming off the Cavaliers’ team plane wearing an Ultimate Warriors T-shirt. Fresh off completing a historic NBA Finals comeback, LeBron, many assumed, was taking one final shot at the team that gave him plenty of bulletin board material (we’re looking at you Mo Speights!).
But LeBron is on a whirlwind media tour right now and in a recent interview with Business Insider, he claims that the wardrobe choice was merely a coincidence.
From the interview:
Well, it’s funny, because my wife bought [it earlier]. She asked me who my favorite wrestlers of all time were, and I told her, “Sting, ‘Stone Cold’ Steve Austin, Ultimate Warrior, The Undertaker, and Ric Flair.” Those are some of my favorite guys ever [from when I was] growing up. So, one day I get home from practice, and there are these T-shirts laying in my bedroom, and my wife purchased them from a store. So, throughout the whole playoffs, I was kind of — you guys might remember, one time, I had the Undertaker shirt on — so I packed them all throughout the playoffs. And the shirt that I had on to come home in, I wore in Vegas, and my teammates sprayed me with champagne, and it got soaking wet, so I had to throw it in the trash. And the only other shirt I had in my bag was my Ultimate Warrior T-shirt. That was the only one because all our bags were underneath the plane. So the only one I had was the Ultimate Warrior T-shirt that was packed in my travel luggage. And that’s what I put on. You can ask any one of my teammates. No one believes — everybody thinks it was set up that way, but it really wasn’t. But It kind of worked out that way.
While the story is plausible, consider us skeptical. James, ever since his infamous nationally televised ‘Decision’ to leave his hometown team for greener pastures in Miami, has been very mindful of his public perception. It’s hard to believe he didn’t have every detail of his outfit planned out for the possibility of a championship celebration. That being said, with his Finals performance, LeBron earned the right to where whatever he wanted, even if it wasn’t necessarily a high-road choice.