Lebron James tried to get sports reporter Michelle Beadle fired from ESPN

Sports reporter Michelle Beadle recently explained some of the old drama she got into with famous athletes during her career tenure. In this case it was the famous basketball player and noteworthy online complainer LeBron James.

Beadle explained it to her old pal 2008 NBA Championship winner Paul Pearce. It happened on the most recent episode of her podcast show "What Did I Miss?" hosted by The Athletic:

Paul Pierce had earlier shared his own feelings about Lebron, for better and worse when it comes to professional critique. However Michelle Beadle leads into this conversation by making it clear her history with James is a different beast.

"You know there was a rumor that [LeBron] got you fired from ESPN, so I can understand why you don’t like him," quipped Paul Pierce, who also recently parted ways with the sports outlet.

Michelle Beadle admitted the story is true. "He tried. He did try, yep. He did try to do that. I was like ‘I’m honored that I’m even on your mind. Thank you very much, sir. That’s a weird place for me to be.’"

Paul Pierce reacted on how personal of a move that sounds for a professional athlete to attempt on a sportscaster.

Beadle elaborates on what happened.

"So my stuff with him started out not personal. Like, I made fun of ‘The Decision’ like 400,000 other talking heads did at the time, and I think for some reason... that was it. So it wasn’t personal to begin with. It’s obviously now. It will always be personal. But it is what it is. But I also I’m very comfortable with not liking people. Like I think that’s what makes us all healthy. It’s the people that pretend they like everyone, you can’t trust them."

"I don’t like the fake stuff, it makes me uncomfortable," Michelle says in closing.

The "Decision" era of Lebron James was when he decided to have an hour-long interview event to announce his decision to leave the Cleveland Cavaliers.