LeBron James: Does the King Need Liverpool Fans to Make Him Feel Loved Again?

When LeBron James first entered the NBA, sure, he had a couple of haters here or there out of jealousy alone because of the hype he was receiving at such a young age. His high school basketball games were being televised on ESPN2; enough said.

Virtually everyone loved LeBron, but that amount of adoration has changed drastically throughout his NBA career, and one has to wonder if he’ll do anything to get fans to love him again, even if it means taking his talents overseas.

Other than the fact that he called himself King James, no one really had a reason to hate LeBron in his first two seasons in the league because his Cleveland Cavaliers were horrible.

Success in his third season began the Kobe Bryant comparisons, which annoyed LA fans; game-winning travels which knocked the Washington Wizards out of the postseason led to LeBron eventually becoming public enemy number one in the nation’s capitol.

When James led the Cavs to an NBA Finals berth the next year, the Jordan comparisons began as Chicago Bulls fans shook their heads in disbelief.

The next year, LeBron ended Washington’s season for a third straight postseason and feuded with DeShawn Stevenson.

In 2009, the Cavs were eliminated by the Orlando Magic, and James walked off the floor after Game 6 without congratulating Orlando. He eventually told reporters:

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“It's hard for me to congratulate somebody after you just lose to them. I'm a winner. It's not being a poor sport or anything like that. If somebody beats you up, you're not going to congratulate them...I'm a competitor.  That's what I do.  It doesn't make sense for me to go over and shake somebody's hand.”

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During the series, a frustrated James also told the media that “I’m only one guy. I took Hedo [Turkoglu] in the first game and Rashard [Lewis] made the shot. I took Rashard in the second game and Hedo made the shot. If I could clone myself, we’d be all right. But I can’t.”

And that’s basically when LeBron officially became the second-most hated player in the NBA, behind only Kobe himself.

At that point, LeBron still had far more fans than haters; he had the entire city of Cleveland looking up to him, but that devotion blew up in three quick steps: quitting Game 5 of the 2010 Eastern Conference Semifinals against the Boston Celtics, "The Decision," which led to devastation and a feeling of betrayal, forcing James’ response, and here we are today.

King James is the most hated athlete in the world, and the Miami Heat losing the NBA Finals was the perfect way to start the summer for thousands, maybe millions of fans. LeBron still has the cult following that latched on to the Miami bandwagon, and real Heat fans defend him because he’s on their team, but that’s about all the fans he currently has.

He could use some love at this point of his career, and according to the Sports Business Journal, the English Premier League soccer team Liverpool FC, which is partially owned by LeBron, is offering a chance for fans to meet the NBA star.

Bryant has taken advantage of China’s massive market, and LeBron could be next, as he’ll tour the nation to promote his brand and meet up with Liverpool for the fan drawing. Any fans LeBron can get now would be encouraging to the star because, after all, he is human.

Following Game 6 of the NBA Finals, LeBron was asked if he was bothered by so many people being happy to see him fail. This is how he responded:

""All the people that were rooting on me to fail, at the end of the day they have to wake up tomorrow and have the same life that they had before they woke up today. They have the same personal problems they had today. I'm going to continue to live the way I want to live and continue to do the things that I want to do with me and my family and be happy with that. So they can get a few days or a few months, or whatever the case may be, on being happy about not only myself, but the Miami Heat not accomplishing their goal. But they got to get back to the real world at some point.""

You don’t respond that way if you don’t care.  LeBron can say he’s not bothered by the hate, but if he wasn’t, he wouldn’t complain so much about it and he wouldn’t have rambled on after being asked a simple yes or no question.

To go from being treated like the greatest thing to ever touch the planet to being hated by the vast majority of NBA fans has to weigh on James’ psyche: he needs fans to help lift his morale more than ever.

David Daniels is a Featured Columnist at Bleacher Report and a Syndicated Writer. Follow him on Twitter.