Delonte West has finally addressed the rumor that followed him for years, and he says nothing ever happened between him and LeBron James’ mother, Gloria James.
The rumor started while West and LeBron were teammates in Cleveland. It spread fast around the 2010 playoffs, as the Cavaliers fell apart against the Boston Celtics just before LeBron left for Miami. It was never backed up by anything, but it turned into one of the most repeated jokes in the NBA and stuck to West for years.
Now he’s speaking on it. “Number one, something like that never happened,” Delonte West told Diary of a Hollywood Street King. “I don’t know where they got that from.”
He was more upset about how the rumor treated Gloria than about what it did to him. “For a strong black woman like that, for people to try to tear her down, that’s terrible,” he said. “That’s terrible in so many ways.”
He also questioned why people kept laughing about it at all. “If we want to continue to grow as a human race, what are we teaching our kids if we try to make humor and fun out of stuff like that?”
The only real question is why it took him this long. West stayed quiet for years while the jokes kept going, and that silence let the rumor run wild. Now his answer is on the record: it never happened.
