Los Angeles sends message to LeBron James, vandalize another mural
Graffiti and Los Angeles go together like Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg, so it’s almost to be expected that when a piece of popular street art goes up, someone is going to vandalize it.
This would seem to go double when the street art has LeBron James as its subject.
This time, the mural in question is of James wearing a No. 23 Lakers jersey while looking up at a depiction of Staples Center and the Great Western Forum — the two venues where the Lakers have played — and seeing Kobe Bryant, Shaquille O’Neal, Magic Johnson, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Wilt Chamberlain, the legends of the Lakers’ past.
A mural adding LeBron James to the Laker greats pops up at Melrose & Ogden. pic.twitter.com/n1A5ETWjvA
— 790 KABC (@KABCRadio) July 19, 2018
At the far left of the mural is longtime Lakers broadcaster Chick Hearn, the man who popularized the term “slam dunk” calling the games of all those greats of the past.
Late Friday night, someone poured white paint over the image of James, prompting the artist, Gustavo Zermeno, and an army of some 40 to 50 volunteers to return to the scene and fix it.
For the second time this month, a mural of new #Lakers superstar LeBron James has been vandalized, this time in the Fairfax District. https://t.co/uRqxg0EJe0 pic.twitter.com/htZoA2YVG0
— KCAL News (@kcalnews) July 21, 2018
Which has some observers wondering just what got a bug up the rear end of Lakers fans and why are they rejecting a guy who’s been to eight more NBA Finals in the past eight seasons than have the Lakers themselves?
“I am surprised,” Zermeno told ESPN. “This is the most positive move for the Lakers in the past five or six years. It is really a surprise that people are upset about LeBron. I don’t understand it.
“[The message of the mural was to] just show LeBron paying homage to not only past Lakers legends but the whole organization. Him showing up to the Lakers and knowing he has some big shoes to fill.”
Of course, it doesn’t help that the Lakers are having a lot of trouble selling the hype on a guy who was the No. 4 seed playing on what was basically a G-League team in Cleveland last year. The Cavaliers may have stormed through the playoffs with a lot of help from the referees in the first round against the Pacers, but they went just 50-32 in the weak Eastern Conference.
The consensus is that James can’t win a championship by himself, and with the likes of JaVale McGee, Lance Stephenson, Lonzo Ball and Michael Beasley for a supporting cast in the loaded West, some wonder if the Lakers can even make the playoffs this season.
So maybe folks in the City of Angels don’t exactly have their halos on straight when it comes to the LeBron hype machine.
Zermeno and five of his friends put up the mural at the corner of Melrose and Fairfax in L.A. last week, hoping they’d have better luck with a LeBron mural than the last guy who tried such an art project.
After all, Jonas Never’s “King of L.A.” mural had to be painted over when vandals got to it. Never simply said he did not have the time nor the energy to continually fix what spray-can-armed detractors were determined to break, so better to simply erase his work and let the photographs people took of it serve as the artistic evidence.
Zermeno may end up having to do the same thing. Until and unless the Lakers win a ring with James and his motley crew of NBA lunatics, the people have spoken.
And the people are saying with spray cans and white paint that LeBron James does not belong in the pantheon of Los Angeles sporting heroes, not even as they’re preparing to watch him give the team its best shot at a playoff appearance since Kobe Bryant was still putting up Hall of Fame numbers over half a decade ago.
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