Hip-hop legend Jay-Z wanted to share his feelings about New York Knicks president Phil Jackson and took an opportunity to do so on Monday night.
While introducing Cleveland Cavaliers star LeBron James as Sports Illustrated’s Sportsperson of the Year on Monday night the iconic rapper took a shot at the Knicks president over his recent comments, mainly Jackson’s use of the term “posse” when describing James’ business associates in an interview with ESPN’s Jackie MacMullan.
Jay Z described James as “the son who honors and worships his mother, Gloria. The friend who put his posse in position.”
“We know where we come from. We do understand where we come from,” Jay Z said. “The only difference between us and someone who has their MBA from Wharton or Sloan or Berkeley or Stanford is opportunity. LeBron James has provided his friends with that opportunity, and we’ve witnessed their development. And if we’re to look up at the scoreboard, very few businessmen are better than Maverick Carter, Rich Paul, Randy Mims and all the rest of the posse behind the scenes that make it look like they’re just hanging out.”
Jackson’s comments came when discussing the Miami Heat losing James to the Cavaliers in free agency.
“It had to hurt when they lost LeBron,” Jackson said. “That was definitely a slap in the face. But there were a lot of little things that came out of that. When LeBron was playing with the Heat, they went to Cleveland, and he wanted to spend the night. They don’t do overnights. Teams just don’t. So now [coach Erik] Spoelstra has to text [Pat] Riley and say, ‘What do I do in this situation?’ And Pat, who has iron-fist rules, answers: ‘You are on the plane. You are with this team.’ You can’t hold up the whole team because you and your mom and your posse want to spend an extra night in Cleveland.
“I always thought Pat had this really nice vibe with his guys. But something happened there where it broke down. I do know LeBron likes special treatment. He needs things his way.”
James and Carter criticized Jackson and James said that he lost respect for Jackson.
In a recent interview with CBS Sports Jackson admitted that he made a mistake discussing another team’s player but didn’t discuss any regret using the term “posse.”
“That’s a topic I’m not going to discuss because one, we are not supposed to discuss other teams’ players in this position that I have here. So I violated one of the tenets of our thing,” Jackson said in the interview.
“The obvious thing is the word itself carries connotation. And I just don’t understand that, that part of it — the word. So I guess word choice could be something I could regret. But talking about other teams’ players, that’s out of the box.”
