LeBron James thanks Kendrick Lamar for inspiring Los Angeles Lakers with ‘mad game talk’

LeBron James has told how Kendrick Lamar inspired the Los Angeles Lakers players with a ‘mad game talk’.

The 6ft 8in forward, whose Lakers debut against the Portland Trail Blazers ended in defeat on Thursday, thanked the rapper for visiting the team on Friday.

Lamar, 31, is an LA native and lifelong Lakers fan.

He visited them at the UCLA Health Training Center to speak to the players as part of the ‘Genius Talks’ series.

Following in the footsteps of Elon Musk and Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson, the King Kunta hit-maker delivered a speech to the players.

And it seemed to have quite the impact.

Afterwards, James, 33, posted a message of thanks on Instagram , sharing a picture of Lamar with the team.

He said: “The homie @kendricklamar came in today and blessed us all with mad game talk, inspiration, drive and what it means to get to the mountain top from the bottom and remain there throughout it all. Appreciate you brother!!”

Second year guard Josh Hart, 23, also told how the 12-time Grammy Award winner had left his mark.

He said: “It’s funny, because sometimes you don’t talk to other people that are at the top of their craft, and when you talk to them you see the parallels,” reports Silver Screen and Roll .

“When he gets ready for a show, he talks about that he lets all the negativity out. He doesn’t party before, he doesn’t do certain things before a show because he wants to be dialed in, he wants to be focused for him to get his message across in that show (because) people pay a lot of money to go see him.

“You see a lot of parallels, and that was one of the aspects he was talking about.

“He talked about when he’s working on an album, like six months before he starts working on it, he starts getting into that mindset about how he wants the dialogue to go, how he wants the listener to react to the lines that he’s saying. Stuff like that.

“For us, obviously we’re not getting in the booth and laying down some bars, even though some of us can, but it’s the mindset that we have to get into. It’s the mindset of doing our roles, how to sacrifice for the greater cause of the team, those kind of things.”

The Lakers play Houston Rockets at home on Sunday. Don’t be surprised to see Lamar there, courtside.