An unlikely duo, FOX News and the NBA, went head to head earlier this week, making headlines just about everywhere. The reason for the clash concerned remarks made by both NBA star, Lebron James, and FOX News host, Laura Ingraham.

In an interview led by broadcaster Cari Champion, Lebron James earlier discussed life, basketball, and Donald Trump. Alongside basketball superstar, Kevin Durant, Lebron talked of his preparation for the All-Star game and of battling racism in America, which became a topic of discussion when his home was vandalized with racial slurs in June 2017. Eventually the conversation led to politics and specifically about the job of the president of the United States.

When asked by Champion how he would describe the “climate for an athlete with a platform that want to talk about what is happening in our world,” James responded with, “the climate is hot” before continuing to stay that being president is “the number one job in America” and that the “appointed person doesn’t understand the people” and, to put in nicer terms than did James, that he doesn’t care about the people.

He went on to say that there were three positions of power that he “could grab inspiration from,” one being the president, but recently he has found Trump’s comments to be “laughable and scary.” James explains that although he cannot change what has happened, he “can continue to alert the people that watch us [the fans].”

James has had a history with the current president and has publicly displayed his dislike for Trump as countless others have done also. This particular case, however, caught the attention of FOX’s Ingraham who could not resist commenting on James’s remarks.

On her FOX News program, The Ingraham Angle, Ingraham’s commentary lit the fuse for a wildfire of uproars against her.

Ingraham began with saying that the banner for her next story should read “dumb jock alert” before criticizing his commentary for being “barely intelligible” and “ungrammatical.” Though how, despite being so unintelligible, Ingraham was able to decipher and be so offended by it is questionable. Ingraham continued in a dry, mocking tone, questioning not only James but Champion herself for asking James what his take was on Trump’s racist comments. Ingraham felt the need to put air quotes around the word racist, possibly to imply that Trump’s comments were not racist.

Ingraham questions why people feel the need to “run their mouth like that” before mimicking James’s use of the word “like.”  “Ignorant,” “shut up and dribble,” and “no one voted for you” are just some of the comments Ingraham made before spewing the one line that led to the most amount of backlash.

If it was not obvious that Ingraham was insulting James’s intelligence before, then it was most evident after she declared, “this is what happens when you attempt to leave high school a year early.”

Ingraham was of course referring to the fact that James dropped out of high school in order to pursue his NBA career. Now after the comment was made, Ingraham’s words left her in hot waters. Since then, James has responded to commentary made by Ingraham, and Ingraham has done best to quell the anger of fans, sports broadcasters, and fellow NBA players.

Both James and Ingraham have received sympathy from on their behalf. Pitman’s own, Senior Estela Arreola, stated that she felt Ingraham “was attacking him [James] for the wrong reasons and a lot of people are angry with Trump.” She went on to explain that the insults hurled at James are the same words that have been used against Trump as well. Arreola states, “James is a citizen, he is a voter and has the right to state his opinions.”

Senior Calvin Baker had a different take, and defended Ingraham stating that although she was “a bit harsh with her comments,” her descriptions “were accurate for the most part because he [James] is really dumb to insult statistically half of his audience by bringing politics in, no matter which side he’s on,” Baker referring to the fact that by insulting Trump, James insults his Republican fans.

The moral of the story? Everyone is entitled to their own opinions and has a right to say what they believe, whether it be appropriate or not. Regardless of which side you may be on, at the end of the day, we are all working together. We may not agree, we may argue, but try to focus on the similarities that unite us, not the differences that divide us.