LeBron James allegedly called one of his hecklers “ol’ steroid ass” and now we have to write about it

Hoo boy, what a night in the NBA. If you’re living, breathing, warm-bodied sports fan, you’ve no doubt already seen the footage from Monday of LeBron James getting into a shouting match with a few Atlanta Hawks fans before those fans were eventually ejected, at the behest of LeBron James according to everyone but LeBron James. And if you haven’t, well, go ahead and get yourself up to speed. Here’s the incident . . .

And here’s LeBron’s response to the response . . .

As you can probably guess, the incident sent LeBron haters into a LeBron-hating spiral, calling him every synonym of “soft” known to man for 12 unbroken hours. But as the dust settled and smoke cleared on Tuesday morning, we learned of the original insult that lit the fuse that detonated the dynamite, changing everything we thought we knew about the Malice at the Instagram Palace. No matter what your feelings are toward LBJ, this is just too good to deny.

Absolutely incredible. We honestly weren’t going to touch this one. You’ve already heard it from every corner of the internet. What could we possibly add to the chaos? But then we saw this and couldn’t resist. LeBron came at this dude with the schoolyard smack, lulled his wife into thinking it was a fair scrap, and then hit them with the full weight of the Association. Say what you want about The King, but you best not miss. Lord knows he doesn’t.