{"id":381690,"date":"2025-12-31T02:50:10","date_gmt":"2025-12-31T02:50:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/381690\/"},"modified":"2025-12-31T02:50:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-31T02:50:10","slug":"lebron-james-draws-criticism-for-golf-swing-during-national-anthem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/381690\/","title":{"rendered":"LeBron James draws criticism for &#8216;golf swing&#8217; during national anthem"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!\n  <\/p>\n<p class=\"speakable\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/category\/person\/lebron-james\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">LeBron James<\/a> took heat over the weekend after he was seen swinging his hips during the national anthem before the Los Angeles Lakers played the Sacramento Kings.<\/p>\n<p class=\"speakable\">The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/category\/sports\/nba\/los-angeles-lakers\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">Lakers star<\/a> was accused of practicing his golf swing instead of standing still with either his hand over his heart or with his hands behind his back. Sports pundit Craig Carton called out James for the move during an episode of his podcast on Monday.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/sports\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">CLICK HERE FOR MORE SPORTS COVERAGE ON FOXNEWS.COM<\/a><\/p>\n<p> <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/nba-lakers-lebron-james-123025-1.jpg\" alt=\"LeBron James adjusts his chest\" width=\"1200\" height=\"675\"\/> <\/p>\n<p>Los Angeles Lakers forward LeBron James (23) in the first half against the Sacramento Kings at Crypto.com Arena on Dec. 28, 2025. (Jayne Kamin-Oncea\/Imagn Images)<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;If you wanna disregard your coach, disregard your teammates, being an 11-plus-1 type of guy, do it on your own time. Don\u2019t do it during my national anthem,&#8221; Carton said. &#8220;A couple of days ago, Lakers basketball, national anthem, he disrespects the national anthem.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;And while the anthem is being played, your guy, the self-appointed \u2018King,\u2019 decides that\u2019s a good time to work on my golf swing and disrespect the men and women of the military who gave their lives for this country. \u2018Let me get a couple of air swings in while the anthem is being played because I don\u2019t play good basketball anymore. I gotta work on my golf game.\u2019&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Fox News Digital reached out to James\u2019 reps for comment.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/sports\/nuggets-star-nikola-jokic-suffers-knee-injury-misses-entire-second-half-loss-miami-heat\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">NUGGETS STAR NIKOLA JOKIC SUFFERS KNEE INJURY, MISSES ENTIRE SECOND HALF IN LOSS TO MIAMI HEAT<\/a><\/p>\n<p> <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/nba-lakers-lebron-james-123025-3.jpg\" alt=\"LeBron James looks back\" width=\"1200\" height=\"675\"\/> <\/p>\n<p>Los Angeles Lakers forward LeBron James (23) reacts after scoring a basket as forward Rui Hachimura, back left, looks on during the first half of an NBA basketball game against the Sacramento Kings, Sunday, Dec. 28, 2025, in Los Angeles. (Jessie Alcheh\/AP Photo)<\/p>\n<p>National anthem controversies first bubbled up during the 2016 season when then-San Francisco 49ers quarterback <a href=\"https:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/category\/person\/colin-kaepernick\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">Colin Kaepernick<\/a> took a knee while &#8220;The Star-Spangled Banner&#8221; played. He said he was protesting racial injustice in the U.S., and took it a step further when he wore socks depicting police officers as pigs and expressed support for Cuban dictator Fidel Castro.<\/p>\n<p>An anthem controversy sparked up again when James and others took a knee during the song in the NBA bubble after <a href=\"https:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/category\/person\/jacob-blake\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">Jacob Blake<\/a> was shot in a police incident weeks after the death of George Floyd. Blake later admitted he had a knife on him when he was shot.<\/p>\n<p>It didn\u2019t appear James was doing an act of protesting before the game against the Kings.<\/p>\n<p> <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/nba-lakers-lebron-james-123025-2.jpg\" alt=\"LeBron James goes for the dunk\" width=\"1200\" height=\"675\"\/> <\/p>\n<p>Los Angeles Lakers forward LeBron James, center, drives to the basket against Sacramento Kings guard Demar Derozan (10) as center Maxime Raynaud (42) watches during the first half of an NBA basketball game, Sunday, Dec. 28, 2025, in Los Angeles.\u00a0 (Jessie Alcheh\/AP Photo)<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/foxnews.onelink.me\/xLDS?pid=AppArticleLink&amp;af_dp=foxnewsaf%3A%2F%2F&amp;af_web_dp=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.foxnews.com%2Fapps-products\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX NEWS APP<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Los Angeles defeated Sacramento, 125-101. James had 24 points and five assists.<\/p>\n<p>Follow Fox News Digital\u2019s<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/FoxNewsSports_\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">\u00a0sports coverage on X<\/a> and subscribe to<a href=\"https:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/newsletters\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\"> the Fox News Sports Huddle newsletter<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Ryan Gaydos is a senior editor for Fox News Digital.<\/p>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles! LeBron James took heat over the weekend after he was&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":381691,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[566],"tags":[64,63,755,7896,7232,590,85],"class_list":["post-381690","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-golf","tag-lebron-james","tag-los-angeles-lakers","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/381690","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=381690"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/381690\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/381691"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=381690"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=381690"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=381690"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}