Julius Erving had some pretty off-the-cuff things to say about LeBron James and his legacy this week. During a recent appearance on Posted Up with Chris Haynes, the NBA legend named his top two all-time NBA teams, combining some of the greatest players ever and creating a fantasy team. One blatant omission from Erving’s list was LeBron James, who is one of the best players to ever step on a basketball court.
On his first team, Dr. J named Oscar Robertson, Jerry West, Wilt Chamberlain, Bill Russell, and Elgin Baylor as his starters. For his second All-NBA team, he listed off Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, Karl Malone, and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. He explained why he left out LeBron, saying, “He’s the guy who has led the charge in terms of super teams. When he put together a team in Miami, he put together a team in Cleveland as well, and he put together a team in Los Angeles. So, he can pick his own team. I ain’t going to pick his team.”
The comments have proven to be slightly controversial on social media, and 50 Cent even chimed in, explaining why he thinks Erving wasn’t thinking straight when he left off LeBron.
“Sounds like old hater shit to me,” he said, reposting a headline about Erving’s statement. “It takes a lot of work and talent to be @kingjames if that wasn’t true we would have 3 or 4 of him, we only got 1.”
Do you think Julius Erving’s critique of LeBron James is valid? Or was it “old hater shit” to keep him off the list?
