Story About LeBron Promising Liverpool A Vegas Party Was Too Fake For Even The British Tabloids To Stand Behind

Liverpool is...not having the best of starts. The high-priced, high-expectation club has gotten out of the gate at 0-2-1, which is only the second-most disastrous performance of the year for a Fenway Sports Group team. But another Reds owner was reportedly not so sanguine about the results. LeBron James, who owns a tiny slice of the club solely for marketing purposes (think Gloria Estefan for the Dolphins more than Jay-Z for the Nets), supposedly gave the team a pep talk.

The Sun, and the (links now dead), that LeBron is offering a carrot for Liverpool to turn things around. A giant, debauched Vegas carrot with champagne and hookers.

"I spent some time with Steven Gerrard and he is passionate about his team. Everybody in sport needs incentive and if the guys at Liverpool win something this year I will give them the best weekend of their life in Vegas. Kanye is in and trust me, nobody does Vegas like LeBron and Kanye."

LeBron added: "We will take them to places in Vegas 99 per cent of people don't even know exist. There is Vegas and then there is Vegas."

Those quotes are fabulous, and don't sound a thing like LeBron. People interviewed by The Sun have this weird habit of sounding exactly like The Sun's editorial voice. (For example, I wonder how these 16-year-olds from Queens used a strictly British euphemism for "drunk.") Normally, we all have a laugh and move on and the non-stupids dismiss it as entertainment. But this is LeBron James, image-shaper extraordinaire, so I'm not really sure how the papers expected to run a made-up story with a made-up quote and not get called out on it.

Sure enough, LeBron's PR people raised a stink and told everyone that it was "total BS British tabloid stuff." And sure enough, both The Sun and the Daily Mail pulled down their articles. We really should have known better. LeBron didn't get into Secret Vegas by telling the plebs that Secret Vegas exists.