Practicing a golf swing and pantomiming a jumper during the Star-Spangled Banner at Madison Square Garden is elite-level trolling, yet the funniest part of Thursday’s viral meltdown is who decided to play hall monitor.
LeBron James stood on the floor before his Philadelphia 76ers debut against the New York Knicks on Tuesday night, lined up beside teammates who mostly stood still, and used the national anthem to work on a hypothetical golf swing. By Thursday, President Donald Trump had fired up his social media feed to share the clip and demand a public groveling session from a 41-year-old playing in his record 24th NBA season.
“I said right from the beginning that he’s no good, a TOTAL DISGRACE,” Trump posted. “LeBron James should apologize to all of those Great American Warriors and Heroes who died for the American Flag, and all that our Country stands for!”
That lecture comes from the exact same commander-in-chief whom the Miami Herald caught on video in 2020 at a Super Bowl watch party waving his hands like a symphony conductor and gesturing at guests during the anthem while the people around him stood with their hands over their hearts. Expecting me to treat this latest outrage cycle as a solemn constitutional crisis requires selective amnesia on a clinical scale. Both of these guys are addicted to the spotlight, and right now, they are using a pregame ceremony to run a two-man pick-and-roll for cheap engagement.
The Super Bowl Conductor Meets the MSG Country Club
Honestly about what happened on that Manhattan hardwood. A 41-year-old veteran in year 24 does not accidentally forget when the music starts. James has heard the Star-Spangled Banner before countless NBA games, and pantomiming a golf swing while his teammates mostly stand still is a deliberate choice to look unbothered. It has zero aura. It looks like a guy trying way too hard to show the cameras that he is too cool for the room.
When Laura Ingraham came after him in 2018, James had a real thesis and real stakes behind his defiance. “We will definitely not shut up and dribble,” James said back then. “I will definitely not do that. I mean too much to society. I mean too much to the youth. I mean too much to so many kids that feel like they don’t have a way out and they need someone to help lead them out of the situation they’re in.”
Compare that 2018 fire, or his 2017 Cavaliers protest wearing one black shoe and one white shoe stamped with “equality” in gold letters, to practicing a fake golf swing during warmups. Invoking the lineage of Muhammad Ali, Jim Brown, Bill Russell, and Jackie Robinson meant something when James was campaigning to get first-time voters to the polls in 2020. Shadow-swinging a golf club at Madison Square Garden accomplishes nothing for the youth… unless the youth are trying to shave two strokes off their handicap at the turn.
Still, Trump forfeits any moral high ground the second he hits send. You cannot play air-baton to the Star-Spangled Banner at a Super Bowl watch party while everyone around you has a hand over their heart, then turn around and demand an NBA player apologize to fallen soldiers for mimicking a jump shot. My kids know how to spot a double standard faster than that, and they aren’t running the executive branch.
Nick Nurse Has a 24th-Year Workload Problem to Solve
While the timeline treats this like a cable-news cage match, Philadelphia head coach Nick Nurse is stuck dealing with the actual basketball fallout hours before Thursday night’s home opener against the Cleveland Cavaliers. Nurse has spent all of training camp begging his locker room to block out external circus acts, only to wake up on game day with the president posting about his star.
“I think that goes right in with other outside noise we’ve already had,” Nurse said before Thursday’s tipoff against Cleveland. “I keep saying the same thing. All I really care about is getting to the practice floor, getting them in the film room, getting them to the game floor. The focus that they’ve had and the intent and all the stuff like that has been outstanding.”
Nurse HAS to say that, because telling the truth would detonate his locker room before Halloween. On the floor, integrating a 41-year-old in his 24th season into a new half-court offense requires surgical precision with transition defense, rotational help, and minute-by-minute workload management. Every possession where James is conserving energy on weak-side closeouts or coasting through drop coverage forces the rest of Philadelphia’s five-man unit to scramble and cover extra ground. Turning every road arena from New York to Boston into a political referendum adds a massive emotional tax onto a roster that already has to manage the physical mileage of a very veteran rotation piece.
Back in 2017, James explained why he refused to stay quiet about the man in the Oval Office. “He doesn’t understand how many kids, no matter the race, look up to the president of the United States for guidance, for leadership, for words of encouragement,” James said that season. “He doesn’t understand that, and that’s what makes me more sick than anything.”
Nine years later, neither man has budged an inch, and James’s camp didn’t even bother returning ESPN’s request for comment before facing his old franchise from Cleveland. Trump gets a news cycle of red-meat headlines to feed his base, LeBron gets to play the unbothered king in a brand-new market, and Nick Nurse is left holding the clipboard when the boo birds rain down at every road tipoff between now and April.
