ESPN's Rick Reilly Apparently Mistakes Satire for News

ESPN's Rick Reilly doesn't quite get the joke and would very much like you to explain it to him. 

The Basketball Jones reported that a satirical piece they published very well may have found its way deep into Reilly's mind as pure fact. 

The sports columnist, like myself, has a penchant for puns and short sentences, and he scribed a beautiful column on Tuesday. 

While I may have some issues with Reilly, this was a rather nice take on LeBron James and why we should step off the ledge and fully plod into King James' court. 

We can skip over the meat of the column because it hardly matters in this case. What does deserve some attention is but a snippet that may signal the legendary writer took a clear joke as fact. 

Lovely. 

First, the Rick Reilly column as published on ESPN can be found here. 

The part that TBJ highlights as a possible gaffe on Reilly's part is this one: 

"

OK, he's not perfect. Threw a Gatorade cup. Punched a walking stick. Carries that stupid little man purse. But if you were to fill a plane with the most spoiled superstars in the country, he'd be boarding in the D group.

"

The "punched a walking stick" statement may be a direct reference to this article posted by J.E. Skeets on May 6th. 

It's entitled, LeBron James punches Juwan Howard's Walking Cane, Leaves arena with arm in sling. 

The bit was a take on Amar'e Stoudemire, who had injured his left hand around the same time. The Knicks forward punched a fire extinguisher encasing and badly cut his hand. 

As The Basketball Jones states, this kind of thing happens quite often. 

There are so many wild stories to vet around the Internet that you could spend hours on just one topic. The hilarious part in all this is Reilly had the tools to make sure whether the James walking stick story was true or a complete fabrication. 

In fact, we all do. It's called a search engine, and I use it a couple times before hitting publish on a story. 

Of course, Reilly may be talking about something completely different. To which we ask, what does James have against walking sticks?

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