LeBron James takes victory lap after win: ‘If you ever see me fighting in the forest with a Grizzly bear, HELP THE BEAR’

When the NBA playoffs come around, LeBron James usually activates what he has dubbed “Zero Dark Thirty-23” mode, in which the Lakers star logs out of social media for the duration of the postseason to focus even more fully on basketball.

With an exception in the 2020 NBA bubble — when social media was his main connection to the outside world — James has done this every year while his team is alive during the postseason since 2013. In a continuation, he had not tweeted since April 14 this season, two days before the playoffs started... until taking a victory lap on Dillon Brooks and the Memphis Grizzlies was too sweet an opportunity for even him to pass up after a series of being poked in the crown jewels and called old by a team full of frontrunning trolls he just beat 4-2.

James kicked things off over on Instagram, where he posted a slideshow with a truly legendary caption:

In addition to being some great wordplay for his first-round opponents, it also appears to be both a reference to rap lyrics, as well as reminiscent of an old Kobe Bryant tweet:

But The King wasn’t done there. While he (as far as I can tell) has not actually referred to Brooks by name since previous to the series — when he lied claimed that the team “can’t disrespect (Brooks) because he makes shots” before completely disrespecting him defensively while he fired up clank after clank from deep — it’s easy to see exactly who James broke his Twitter hiatus for.

After all, it seems unlikely at best that he just really wanted to break “Zero Dark Thirty-23” mode just to send out some Jay-Z lyrics:

And even if James didn’t say it, safe to say everyone on Twitter definitely noticed who all this was about:

So it’s safe to say that while LeBron said he wasn’t “here for the bulls---,” he definitely noticed it. And just like his teammates last night, he did his talking on the court before having a bit of fun off of it.

You can follow Harrison on Twitter at @hmfaigen.