LeBron James didn’t hesitate on Tuesday when asked to explain what constitutes locker room talk in his eyes, and he didn’t even feel the need to reference Donald Trump by name while taking a shot at him in the process.
“What is locker room talk to me? It’s not what that guy said,” the Cleveland Cavaliers forward told reporters. “We don’t disrespect women in no shape or fashion in our locker room. That never comes up.”
The question was asked in reference to the Republican presidential nominee’s recent use of the term “locker room talk,” which he employed to defend jokes he made in 2005 about sexually assaulting women. Since then, professional athletes in various sports have spoken out publicly against Trump’s comments, which included a joke about grabbing women “by the p***y,” saying they did not mirror what they see in their own locker rooms.
“I’ve got a mother-in-law, a wife, a mom and a daughter, and those conversations just don’t go on in our locker room,” James said Tuesday. “What goes on in our locker room is sporting events that happened the night before, about family, about strategies that we may have that night, about a highlight that may have happened, you know, if there was a home run in the bottom of the ninth or there was an alley-oop dunk from a player the night before. That’s what happens in our locker room.
“But what that guy was saying,” James then added, “I don’t know what that is. That’s trash talk.”
Editor’s note: Donald Trump regularly incites political violence and is a serial liar,rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist and birther who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims — 1.6 billion members of an entire religion — from entering the U.S.
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