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LeBron James offered a controlled and passionate response to a racial slur being spraypainted on his Los Angeles home on Wednesday.

LeBron James has worked hard to become the best player in the NBA over the last decade-plus. He’s worked even harder to be a role model for young children. But even his accolades, popularity and riches cannot exclude him from the ignorance and racism that lives in America.

One day before he was set to play in Game 1 of his seventh NBA Finals in a row, someone spraypainted the N-word on a gate outside of his Los Angeles home. Even though LeBron is known for having a laser focus during the NBA Playoffs, he admits that this action has captured his attention, at least for his family’s sake.

While speaking with reporters, LeBron issued a response to the disgusting act.

Read ‘Bron’s response below:

“As I sit here on the eve of one of the greatest sporting events we have in sports, race and what’s going on comes again, and on my behalf and my family’s behalf. But I look at it as this, I mean if this is to shed a light and continue to keep the conversation going on my behalf then I’m okay with it. And my family is safe, at the end of the day, they’re safe and that’s the most important. It just goes to show that racism will always be a part of the world, a part of America. And hate in America, especially for African-Americans, is living every day. Even though that it’s concealed most of the time, people hide their faces and say things about you, and when they see you they’ll smile to your face, it’s alive every single day.

“As I sit here on the eve of one of the greatest sporting events we have in sports, race and what’s going on comes again, and on my behalf and my family’s behalf. But I look at it as this, I mean if this is to shed a light and continue to keep the conversation going on my behalf then I’m okay with it. And my family is safe, at the end of the day, they’re safe and that’s the most important. It just goes to show that racism will always be a part of the world, a part of America. And hate in America, especially for African-Americans, is living every day. Even though that it’s concealed most of the time, people hide their faces and say things about you, and when they see you they’ll smile to your face, it’s alive every single day.

“I’ll be focused tomorrow on our game plan and focused on these games, but I’m at a point in my life where my priorities are in place, and basketball comes second to my family,” James said. “It actually comes after me continuing to be a role model to the youth and what I do as far as with my foundation. I will be as focused as I can be on the job at hand tomorrow. But this is a situation where it puts me back in place of what’s actually more important, and basketball is not the most important thing in my life.

“I think the most unfortunate part is that I’m here right now and I can’t be home to see my boys right now. My little girl’s too young to actually understand it right now. But I can’t sit in front of my boys right now and I won’t be home until next week. This is kind of killing me inside right now. But my wife is unbelievable, my mother, my mother-in-law and my sister-in-law, they’re going to do a great job of talking to them when they get home from school. Because of Apple being so great, I can FaceTime them, but I like to do face-to-face conversations when it comes with a situation like this. I’ve talked about this before, having two sons, two sons that have great minds and they’re very open to life and love life and things of that nature. So, for me to be able just to try and give them the blueprint as much as I can on what life has to offer, but at the end of the day they have to walk their own path and hopefully I give them enough life skills so that when they’re on their journey and they’re ready to fly they can fly on their own.”

“I mean, obviously you see I’m not my normal, energetic self. It will pass. That’s fine. I’m figuring it out. I’m thinking about my kids a lot. Obviously I’m not in front of them, but my wife, she’s the Energizer Bunny of the family and she said everything’s fine. So that helps me out a lot. Time heals all, and at the end of the day, like I said, if this incident that happened to my family today can keep the conversation going and can shine light on us finding a way to keep progressing and not regressing, I’m not against it happening to us again, as long as my family’s safe.”

Photo: WENN.com