Shams Charania shared an injury update for LeBron James. A few minutes later, LeBron corrected the record with his own announcement.
Shams Charania is one of the NBA’s most well-known news breakers but lately, he’s received as much attention for typos and rephrasing press releases to sounds like sourced reports as he has for earth-shattering news drops.
Today, he found himself in the news cycle for a report that was quickly updated by the target himself — LeBron James
LeBron has been out of the lineup since Feb. 26 and his impending return date is of extreme importance to the Lakers, millions of NBA fans and pretty much every other team in the Western Conference playoff race. At 1:34 p.m. today, Shams tweeted an injury update that included a note that “James is hopeful for a return within the final 3-to-4 games of the regular season.”
This was a slightly more detailed variation of an almost identical report shared by Woj at roughly the same time.
What did LeBron James say in his response to Shams and Woj?
It’s not clear who the source was for Shams or Woj was but it’s pretty clear it wasn’t LeBron, because, at 2:37 p.m., LeBron tweeted that there was no target date for his return.
The last line with the face-palm emoji, “God bless y’all sources. I speak for myself!” was clearly directed right at Shams and Woj, even though he didn’t mention either by name.
The Lakers have nine games left on the schedule, including a brutal five-game road trip — Thunder, Bulls, at Bulls, at Timberwolves, at Rockets, at Jazz, at Clippers, Suns, Jazz. They are currently tied with the Dallas Mavericks for the No. 9 seed in the West and probably hoping that LeBron’s timeline ends up being closer to Shams’ report, regardless of what The King says.
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Author: Ian Levy
March 23, 2023 | 4:32 pm
