After Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-Ga.) lost in the Georgia Senate runoffs to Democrat Raphael Warnock Tuesday night, LeBron James floated the idea that he would be interested in buying the Atlanta Dream from her.
The NBA superstar announced his potential interest if an opportunity were to open up in the organization’s ownership group, The Hill reported.
"Think I’m gone put together an ownership group for The Dream. Whose in?" James wrote on Twitter Tuesday night as news stations were reporting that Warnock was the projected Senate winner.
Think I’m gone put together an ownership group for the The Dream. Whose in? #BlackVotesMatter✊???? pic.twitter.com/9wclgdED2w
— LeBron James (@KingJames) January 6, 2021
A number of players on the professional women’s basketball team criticized Loeffler this summer over her vocal endorsements of President Donald Trump and brash criticism of Black Lives Matter.
In early August, several Dream players elected to wear “Vote Warnock” t-shirts to their games to garner support for him before he was elected as Georgia’s first Black senator in the runoff victory, The Washington Post reported.
“We wanted to make sure we could still keep the focus on our social justice movement, and, funny enough, Rev. Warnock is somebody who supports everything that we support and just happens to be running in that seat,” Atlanta Dream forward Elizabeth Williams said. “So it just worked out really well.”
Loeffler, 50, said in July that the WNBA should walk back its support and on-court branding of Black Lives Matter. Despite the current tense political state of the country, Loeffler argued that people “want less, not more politics” present in sports presentations.
She also said that the country has no capacity to accept racism but later condemned social justice organization, Black Lives Matter, in the same breath.
"There is no room for racism in this country. We cannot have it," she said. "But there is an organization, different from the saying, an organization called Black Lives Matter founded on Marxist principles. Marxism supports socialism."
Instead of being discouraged by the team owner’s stance, Dream players expressed that they became emboldened to stand up for the social justice issues important to them.
“When we realized what our owner was doing and how she was kind of using us and the Black Lives Matter movement for her political gain, we felt like we didn’t want to feel kind of lost as the pawns in this,” Williams told The New York Times this summer.
James, who has been critical of Trump and his Republican allies in the past, boasts an estimated net worth of up to $500 million, according to Republic World. Loeffler, one of the wealthiest members of Congress, bought the team with ownership partner, Mary Bock, in 2011, per the Hill.
Even if James can find an ownership group to afford the purchase, Loeffler is under no obligation to sell her share in the team, no matter the amount of public criticism, CBS reported.
Athletes nationwide rejoiced upon learning Loeffler lost her Senate runoff election, ESPN reported. The runoff between Loeffler and Warnock was among two heavily publicized Senate runoffs in Georgia. Democrat Jon Ossoff beat Republican David Perdue in the other Senate race, as Blavity previously reported.