NBA

‘That’s why you dunked on me?’ Jayson Tatum, LeBron James laugh about autograph snub.

By Amin Touri, The Boston Globe

July 16, 2024

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Email
• Email
• ...

If you needed a reminder of just how long LeBron James has been at the top of the basketball world, Jayson Tatum provided a good one this week.

Fresh off his first NBA title, Tatum has been enjoying his time with Team USA ahead of the Olympics this summer, and he shared a story of when he tried to get an autograph from James — then in his first stint with the Cavaliers — as an 11-year-old.

“Larry Hughes is my dad’s best friend, they played on the Cavs together,” Tatum explained. “My mom took me to a game in Memphis, I wanted to meet LeBron, and I wanted to get a picture with him and an autograph. There was a lot of people back there, and he was like, I’m out, I gotta go.”

“And I got in the car and started crying,” Tatum said with a laugh. “But we cool now.”

Nearly 15 years later, Tatum finally got to share that story with James — now 39 and heading to his fourth Olympics — at Team USA camp.

“That’s why you dunked on me, though?” James asked, referencing Tatum’s poster in Game 7 of the 2018 Eastern Conference finals, which Tatum jokingly called “The get-back.”

“That’s the last time you had that haircut,” James told Tatum, who arrived in Las Vegas sporting a much shorter look than he has in recent years.

Tatum and Team USA open Olympic play in Lille, France, against Serbia on July 28.