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LeBron James and Brian Windhorst
There isn’t a single reporter who’s been keeping tabs on LeBron James longer than Brian Windhorst, who started covering the generational superstar when he was still playing high school basketball in Ohio. Last year, the insider was labeled “weird” by the man he’s been covering for more than two decades, and he floated a theory about a beef he thinks may stem back to a Photoshopped picture he had nothing to do with.
In the 1990s, Kobe Bryant, Kevin Garnett, and Tracy McGrady led the group of notable NBA players who declared for the draft straight out of high school, and when the new millennium rolled around, all eyes turned to an up-and-coming prospect who was poised to go the same route: LeBron James.
The Ohio native was thrust into the national spotlight while playing at St. Vincent-St. Mary High School in Akron. That was also the alma mater of Brian Windhorst, the reporter who started covering LeBron’s journey to the NBA during his time on the team and continued to chronicle his career for local outlets after he was selected by the Cavaliers with the first overall pick in 2003.
Windhorst’s reputation as the so-called “LeBron Whisperer” was undoubtedly a factor in ESPN’s decision to hire him in 2010, and he continued to keep tabs on him while expanding his horizons and cementing himself as one of the league’s preeminent insiders.
However, things took an interesting turn last year when James made it clear he wasn’t a huge fan of Windy, who has offered an explanation concerning the origins of the one-way feud.
Brian Windhorst thinks LeBron James called him “weird” over a Photoshopped picture that appeared on The Pat McAfee Show
Windhorst has proved he’s an incredibly capable reporter who can operate well beyond the LeBron Beat, but he’d be the first person to admit James is inextricably responsible for the career he has today.
It seemed safe to assume the two parties had a pretty amicable relationship, but that belief was cast into doubt when James appeared on The Pat McAfee Show last year and went after Windhorst for attempting to paint himself as his “best friend” and labeling him “weird” for doing so.
“This guy who says he’s my f-cking best friend. These guys are just weird.”
– LeBron on Brian Windhorst
(🎥 @PatMcAfeeShow / h/t @Underdog )
— NBACentral (@TheDunkCentral) March 26, 2025
Windhorst responded to that development by taking the high road and suggesting James had mischaracterized the relationship he claims to have with him, and he recently revisited the topic while speaking with Bryan Curist during an episode of The Press Box.
The insider suggested James was actually mad at something Stephen A. Smith had said before he sat down with McAfee and Co. and decided to take a shot at him while venting, and he theorized LeBron’s comments could be traced back to a running bit on that particular program.
Brian Windhorst On LeBron James Calling Him “Weird”:
“He was just angry at Stephen A. I’ve never once said I was his best friend, I’ve never claimed to be a LeBron expert. I’ve never seen myself as anything but a journalist covering a great athlete.” pic.twitter.com/JBtZnZY1eg
— SM Highlights (@SMHighlights1) June 28, 2026
Here’s what he had to say about that gag:
“I think part of what happened there was Pat showed him a doctored photo that they made on the McAfee Show, because whenever I would go on the McAfee Show, they would have a running joke that I was LeBron’s teammate.
They had this team photo that they plastered my face on because I went to LeBron’s high school, but I was seven years ahead of him. I wasn’t his classmate. He saw that, and I’m not sure he understood that was the McAfee Show that did that.
I don’t know if he thought that was something that I did.”
There’s no way to know if that’s actually the case, but it does seem like a fairly plausible explanation.