LeBron James Comments on Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's Critique of COVID-19 Meme

By Tadi Abedje Published: December 30, 2021

LeBron James Comments on Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s Critique of COVID-19 Meme

In Summary

The NBA Hall of Famer and all-time points leader took issue with James’ Instagram post comparing COVID-19 to the flu.

There is no question that LeBron James and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar are two of the greatest players ever to have stepped on the hardwood floor. Despite their accomplishments on the court, they have different opinions about the seriousness of the coronavirus, according to BET.

On Dec. 24, James posted a Spiderman pointing meme on his Instagram page, implying that COVID-19, the cold and flu are similar to each other as it relates to symptoms, hospitalizations and symptoms. He said on the post, “Help me out folks.”

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Abdul-Jabbar took offense to the four-time NBA champion’s post and hopes James will demonstrate more responsibility with his social media posts during the ongoing pandemic.

“As is evident by some of the comments that cheer LeBron’s post, he’s given support to those not getting vaccinated, which makes the situation for all of us worse by postponing our health and economic recovery,” he wrote in an essay in response to James on Substack.

Abdul-Jabbar has been a strong supporter of people getting vaccinated and wearing their masks. Additionally, he gave examples in his essay of how COVID-19, the cold and flu are different when it comes to death.

“In the 2019-2020 flu season, 400,000 people were hospitalized and 22,000 people died. In 2020, 385,428 people died of COVID-19, while so far in 2021, 423,558 have died in the U.S., for a total of 808,986 deaths,” Abdul-Jabbar wrote.

According to Harrison Faigen, James said, “We’re all trying to figure out COVID and the new strain. And the flu, I think people forgot about the flu. People like literally forgot about the flu during these times, like that’s still going around. It’s flu season, so people have forgot about the flu. People have forgot about common colds. That happens, especially with a lot of our kids that’s in school. My daughter is in first grade, so a lot of these kids are getting like common colds and getting the flu.”