LeBron James, Kevin Durant and Stephen Curry take a lot of crap from fans online, and now there's a study out to show just how much abuse they take from angry fans on social media. The betting site Pickswise did a study on it, and it's no surprise the Los Angeles Lakers star gets the most hateful messages from fans.
In fact, it's not even close.
LeBron James racked up 122,568 abusive messages against him according to the methodology of this study:
The data was collected directly from Twitter from the past 12 months (June 2020 – June 2021). Messages containing words, phrases and hashtags that were known abusive terms were logged against each player and the respective sport they play/ played in.
More than 500,000 abusive messages were analysed across 75 current or former athletes.
The next closest is soccer player Marcus Rashford with “only” 32,328. LeBron James had almost four times as many over this time period.
Again, this isn't all that surprising given LeBron's status as a player and how he is very willing to speak his mind on political issues on social media. While much of the hate is unwarranted, being so good at sports and outspoken on social justice issues will result in a lot of late.
After LeBron James and Marcus Rashford is Tom Brady, and then there's Brooklyn Nets star Kevin Durant. KD is always willing to mix it up on social media, and his move to the Golden State Warriors in 2016 drew plenty of hate. So, yeah, Durant being up high is no shocker.
KD's former Warriors teammate, Stephen Curry, is at No. 9 on the list (and we know he likes checking out his social media during games). Interestingly enough, Portland Trail Blazers star Damian Lillard is higher than Curry at No. 6. One would think Curry would be higher than Lillard, but evidently that's not the case.
Check out the full list here.