Why don’t the Lakers respect LeBron James? Kobe has three statues—why doesn’t LeBron, who is better, have even one? He didn’t get a farewell tour and now they won’t offer him a contract, trying to push him out.

The Lakers never really accepted Lebron and the fanbase never accepted him because they saw him as a mercenary who went from superteam to superteam to try to win. He wasn’t ‘homegrown’ the way Magic or Kobe or West was. He didn’t spend alot of time with the Lakers like Kareem (14 seasons) or win multiple titles like Shaq. His career with the Lakers is probably most similar to Wilt Chamberlain – a certified superstar who landed on the Lakers as a way to both win more titles and to close out his career.

• Lebron will not get a statue with the Lakers. He will almost certainly get one with Cleveland and he *should* get one with Miami too.
• Lebron’s jersey should be retired with the Lakers though. That much I do think should happen. CLE, MIA and LAL should all retire his jersey because he won a title with every one of those franchises as the best player. That should be enough for jersey retirement.
• The 2020 ring isn’t respected by a lot of fans because Lebron won it. I don’t care what people say, that’s not an asterisk ring. Everyone played under the same conditions how can it be an asterisk? Lakers even lost home court advantage. It’s just because Bron won it and people look for ways to discredit him as much as possible that’s why.
• Many Lakers fans are not Lakers fans at all – they are Kobe fans. and they see Bron as threatening Kobe’s legacy. Bron was always viewed as Kobe’s rival. So these fans will never ever accept Lebron and they will hate on Bron as much as possible.
• Lakers fans are used to winning multiple championships and going to multiple Finals. Despite Bron playing for the Lakers and still putting up decent numbers into his old age, they want to see more success from him than just that one bubble ring.
• Because Bron has so many haters they blame Bron for everything. They blame him for being LeGM and trading away teammates. They blame him for ruining the team. They blame him for recruiting teammates as well. They blame him for sitting out games. They blame him for stat padding when he plays. They blame him for flopping. They blame him for whining. They blame him whenever his teammates don’t do well enough. They blame him if his teammates do too well and say they’re carrying him. So no matter what Bron does, he gets killed for it.