Shortly after LeBron James inked his four-year deal with the Los Angeles Lakers, the Culver City-based Blaze Pizza inaugurated the signing by tweeting a pizza party on Tuesday, July 10.

“The King” then responded to the tweet, expressing interest in attending the party.

The relatively new artisan pizzeria and the 6-foot-8 forward have long been partners with James being an early investor to the fledgling franchise. So it wasn't out of the realm of possibility to assume that this purported appearance could be authentic.

Free pizza and a LeBron sighting — it's no surprise that these tweets immediately sent shockwaves across the Twitter-sphere. Even if you lose out on seeing the newest Laker acquisition (arguably the biggest free agent coup in their already prolific gallery of greats), at least you get a slice of pizza at no cost.

Fast forward to July 10 and a massive queue of fans has already formed outside the pizzeria, eagerly awaiting the arrival of the four-time NBA Most Valuable Player.

Then it slowly dawned on Lakers fans in attendance that the James appearance may have been a ruse, with one person musing that Kobe Bryant would never flake out on his fans.

Still, some fans were not losing hope — until Blaze Pizza formally shut the door on that possibility.

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Where exactly was LeBron then? Well his wife, Savannah, has you covered.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BlEiGaLF0uK/?taken-by=mrs_savannahrj

For what it's worth, they did get their free pizza and LeBron fans are often known to be forgiving, so they will probably get over this — especially when the regular season kicks off.