LeBron James Scared the Heck out of an Older Woman with a Big Dunk

There was no shortage of #HotTakes after Sunday's close-quarters shovel fight between the Cleveland Cavaliers and Houston Rockets.

Beans were stomped, free throws were missed and an aggressive rendition of the "Cotton-Eyed Joe" broke out as Cleveland fell 105-103 in overtime to James Harden and an angry Rockets squad.

The win has Houston trying to appoint Harden the king of basketball, while LeBron James rifles off vague pout-spiration over social media.

Lost in all the "clutch" taker-y and playoff conjecturing after Sunday is another ditch-fire hot question I will now add to the flames: Does LeBron James terrorize the elderly?

Of all the juicy, bite-sized media provided in Sunday's slugfest, the one I keep coming back to is this picture of an older woman recoiling in abject terror as James flies toward the basket for a breakaway dunk.

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Getty photographer Bill Baptist captured the image. Take a moment and just look at it. Stare into the face of deep, visceral horror.

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Closer.

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Can't stop now.

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No. No.

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All right, now that you've gazed into the abyss and it has gazed back, let's try—as we can only attempt—to hash this out. There's so much going on in this image.

We'll start with the obvious: There is voodoo at play here.

Nothing else explains this woman's very real and present fear at James preparing to punish the iron, other than the notion that her central nervous system is directly tethered to the rims at the Toyota Center via African-based witchcraft. She feels every vicious dunk as if she were the one being yammed upon.

This would also explain the woman next to her—a daughter, perhaps, who knows her mother's ethereal link to the rim and covers her face to avoid watching her birth-giver's pain.

Additionally, I'd like to point out the Jared-from-Subway lookalike to the left, who's struggling mightily to make sense of it all.

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"The Dunk Screamer" is an instant classic, guys—a contemporary in the vein of Edvard Munch.

@DrCarson73

She's seen some things.

This is what you do, James. Your dunks hurt not only the rims, but the people watching.

Pray for the Dunk Screamer. She just wanted to watch some friendly, peach-basket roundball—not this high-flying smut that passes as professional hoops nowadays.

Dan is on Twitter, staring dead-eyed into the maw of the Dunk Screamer.