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LeBron James Confuses City of NHL’s Kings Despite Sharing Arena With Them

The Lakers star mixed up his royalty mascots.

Daniel Chavkin

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LeBron James has been a member of the Lakers for four seasons, but he apparently hasn’t noticed with which NHL team he shares an arena with.

After Sunday’s NBA All-Star Game, James touched on his aspiration to one day own an NBA team in Las Vegas by praising all the teams in Nevada’s largest city. He then went on to list all the teams in Las Vegas, except he incorrectly placed the NHL’s Kings in Vegas.

“I would love to at some point down the road own an NBA franchise, (and) be able to bring a winning franchise to a city,” James said. “Vegas is a really cool city, and they’re doing some great things in sports these days. Obviously you’ve seen what the Aces are doing, how you’ve got the Raiders there, you’ve got the Kings there, the hockey team, they’re doing a lot of great things.”

Of course, the Golden Knights are the NHL’s Las Vegas representative and have been so since 2017. When a media member corrected James’s mistake, the Lakers forward joked about it.

“Kings are in LA, right? There are two kings in LA,” he said in a nod to his King James nickname.

The Kings were in Los Angeles well before James arrived, having been an NHL expansion franchise in 1967. They have shared an arena with the Lakers for almost their entire existence as a franchise, first at the Forum and now at Staples Center, errr, Crypto.com Arena.

The Kings responded cleverly on Twitter shortly afterward.

“Some roommates forget to do the dishes. Some roommates forget to take out the trash. Others forget you live there too,” the two-time Stanley Cup champs tweeted.

At the very least, a king and a knight come from the same category of mascot, giving James a sliver of an excuse.

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Daniel Chavkin
DANIEL CHAVKIN

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