My faith commands me to love others. Some people, however, are harder to love than others. I confess I have a hard time loving or admiring LeBron James.

AT&T and its advertisers are currently running an ad featuring LeBron as the hero of “regular people.” When AT&T Lily tells him they are offering deals on the newest iPhone, LeBron demands equity for all. When Lily assures the Wizard of Woke that the deal is available to all, he smiles condescendingly down at Lily and says, “My job here is done!”

LeBron and his fluffers want him to be seen as a defender of freedom and equity. They want schools and roads named after him.

He does deserve credit. LeBron James is undoubtedly the second-greatest basketball player of all time. Due to his prowess on the basketball court, he has become very wealthy and very famous.

As a prominent and successful African American athlete, his ego has prompted him to go beyond the basketball court and make comments about race relations here in the United States. He is on record proclaiming, “We must do better!” No argument here.

LeBron is proud of his accomplishments. His insight and his abilities have no limits in his own mind.

Three years ago, however, the communists in China, contrary to promises, began to intensify restrictions on freedoms in Hong Kong. When citizens in Hong Kong began to protest, Daryl Morey, General Manager of the Houston Rockets, tweeted in support of those calling for freedom.

LeBron, who has been so vocal about race relations and freedom in America, belittled Morey’s expression of free speech by saying, “I believe he wasn’t educated on the situation at hand.”

LeBron’s comment begs the question, “What does LeBron know about China that the rest of us do not know?”

Like Morey, I see the communists in China as a threat to freedom in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and anywhere else humans draw breath. I watched them suppress the students in the ‘89 Democracy Movement where the “so-called” People’s Liberation Army killed thousands of Chinese students calling for more freedoms in China.

Now LeBron can be forgiven for not recalling the Tiananmen Square Massacre because he was only four years old at that time.

Some have suggested that the vast amounts of money that LeBron has received from Chinese interests blind him to the Chinese communists’ freedom-hating actions. But that can’t be true, because he has no compunctions about criticizing America, the land of his birth and the foundational source of his wealth.

LeBron must have secret knowledge about communist China. In criticizing General Manager Morey, he basically accused him of ignorance. Mr. James went on to say, “And so many people could have been harmed, not only financially but physically, emotionally, spiritually.”

It is hard to look at what LeBron said without noticing a threat in between his lines. Who is issuing the threats? Who is in danger?

After LeBron’s comments, Sports Commentator Michael David Smith, from Pro Football Talk, tweeted, “Morey literally was thinking about others. He was thinking about the people of Hong Kong, who want the same freedoms Americans take for granted.”

Like Michael David Smith, I am for freedom. I see communist China as the world’s largest slave plantation. I see the CCP as an enemy of freedom everywhere. I don’t see Uncle LeBron’s China the way he does. Perhaps Uncle LeBron, with all his learning, will educate us about the situation at hand.

It costs LeBron nothing to pretend he is standing up for “regular people” in a scripted commercial. I imagine AT&T compensated him well for his charade with Lily. It would be heroic and costly for him to stand up for all the people enslaved in Communist China. He and his gang can virtue signal all they want, but all I see is self-serving hypocrisy.

Ned Cosby, a regular contributor to American Thinker, is a pastor, veteran Coast Guard officer, and a retired career public high school teacher. His newest novel OUTCRY is a love story exposing the refusal of Christian leaders to report and discipline clergy who sexually abuse our young people. This work of fiction addresses crimes that are all too real. Cosby has also written RECOLLECTIONS FROM MY FATHER’S HOUSE, tracing his own odyssey from 1954 to the present. For more info, visit Ned Cosby.

Image: LeBron James AT&T commercial. YouTube screengrab.