LeBron Raps “The Way I Am” on the Court. Eminem Wanted to Play in the League. Inside Hip-Hop and Basketball's 40-Year Bond.

The best player of his generation warms up to a Marshall Mathers verse. Marshall Mathers once thought his jump shot was a better bet than his pen. That says a lot about how close these two worlds have always been.

Seven hours before tip-off of Game 5 against Minnesota on April 30, 2025, LeBron James was alone on the Crypto.com Arena floor, getting shots up and rapping Eminem's "The Way I Am" word for word. Bleacher Report caught it on camera, and by that night House of Highlights' post of the clip had passed 670,000 views on X.

LeBron rapping "The Way I Am" while warming up before Game 5 against the Timberwolves, April 30, 2025.

It was not the first time. In June 2012, before Game 7 of the Eastern Conference Finals against Boston, cameras caught LeBron in the Miami locker room rapping the same song. The Heat won that night and went on to win his first championship. Thirteen years apart, two elimination games, one Eminem record.

The song choice is not random. "The Way I Am" is Eminem's 2000 answer to people who want him to be something he is not. For a player who spent most of his career as the most picked-apart athlete on the planet, it lands.

"White Boy Wednesday"

LeBron has never hidden it. When he joined the Lakers in 2018, he told reporters the team played Eminem at Wednesday practices. "Today's White Boy Wednesday. Seriously," he said. "I love Eminem." The same year, when Kamikaze got mixed reviews, he went to bat for it on social media, saying anyone who did not rate it was "just hating."

The link goes back further. LeBron is the first face you see in the video for "Forever," the 2009 Drake, Kanye West, Lil Wayne and Eminem single made for the soundtrack to More Than a Game, the documentary about LeBron's high school team in Akron. It went to number 8 on the Billboard Hot 100 and is now certified Diamond.

When The Game said on a podcast that nobody plays Eminem in locker rooms, fans did not argue. They just posted the LeBron clips.

The hooper who became a rapper

Here is the part most people miss. Before he was a rapper, Eminem thought basketball might be his way out. In his 2008 autobiography, also titled The Way I Am, he wrote that at 18 he "thought I could be better at basketball than I could be at rapping" and was "seriously considering pursuing a pro b-ball career." His conclusion: "B-ball was a long shot, but so was rapping."

So when LeBron raps "The Way I Am" on an NBA court, it is a little bit of a full-circle moment. The guy who wanted to be a hooper wrote the song the greatest hooper of his era uses to get ready.

Detroit, courtside

Eminem's basketball loyalty has always been to the Pistons. When the team moved back downtown to Little Caesars Arena on October 18, 2017, its first game in downtown Detroit since 1978, Eminem was the surprise guest. As "Lose Yourself" played before tip-off he stood up courtside in a Pistons shirt, took the mic and told the building to "make some noise for the Detroit Pistons." It came one week after his BET freestyle against Donald Trump, and Pistons coach Stan Van Gundy said afterward that by involving Eminem, the team made a statement without saying a word. The Pistons won 120 to 90.

And in May 2026, Eminem and 50 Cent sat courtside together for Game 5 of the Pistons and Cavaliers second-round series, with Paul Rosenberg and Mr. Porter alongside them and Big Sean a few seats away. The Pistons lost 117 to 113, but the two had done this before: they also sat courtside together at the 2005 NBA Finals between the Pistons and the Spurs. We covered that night here.

Eminem has worn the jersey on product too. In October 2025 he teamed with the NBA and Ghostwrite on "Game Face" collectibles that put him in Pistons colors.

The Shady side of the arena

50 Cent has been the most basketball-connected artist on Shady Records for two decades. This summer he performed at Pacers star Tyrese Haliburton's wedding, and according to Haliburton, did it for free after another artist quoted him $750,000 for a half-hour set.

Kendrick and DeRozan: same city, same block

The clearest modern example of rap and hoops being one family is Kendrick Lamar and DeMar DeRozan. Both grew up in Compton. When Kendrick dropped the "Not Like Us" video on July 4, 2024, DeRozan appeared in it, right on the line about him, and he had already walked out on stage at Kendrick's Pop Out concert in Los Angeles that June. "We're from the same city, we grew up damn near in the same neighborhood," DeRozan said. "That's basically family."

"Not Like Us," cued just before DeMar DeRozan's cameo around 2:43.

Why the two worlds keep merging

The pattern is old. Kurtis Blow put out a song literally called "Basketball" in 1984. Allen Iverson brought rap style so fully into the NBA that the league answered with a dress code, and in 2000 he recorded a rap single, "40 Bars," as Jewelz, that was shelved after backlash over its lyrics. Jay-Z was courtside for LeBron when LeBron was still in high school.

Both worlds sell the same story: a kid with nothing, a ton of reps nobody sees, and one shot to make it. That is why NBA players warm up to rap, and why rappers rap about hoopers. It is also why "The Way I Am" fits LeBron so well. Eminem chose the mic over the court, and he still ended up in NBA locker rooms.

What we could not verify

The 2025 warm-up clip was filmed by a fan or team staffer and first spread on TikTok and X; we could not identify who first posted it. We also could not find an official, embeddable upload of the 2012 Game 7 locker-room clip, so it is described here rather than shown. Eminem has not publicly responded to either LeBron clip.