Eleven years ago, Eric Martin cringed as he watched LeBron James dismantle the Hawks in Game 3 of the 2015 Eastern Conference Finals with a 37-point triple-double in overtime.
The 42-year-old retired sales executive, who’s a Golden State Warriors fan, fired off a tweet from his couch in his home in Phoenix.
“Lebron is 30, this f–kery won’t go on for much longer, thank god,” he wrote from his X account, @urkle91.
That tweet has become a viral sensation, having more than a decade-long shelf life.
Superstars have retweeted it.
It has been repurposed to include players in other sports, such as Shohei Ohtani and Patrick Mahomes. It has been viewed millions of times.
It even reached James himself.
“I saw that Tweet throughout all of my 30s,” James said on the “New Heights” podcast. “Want to know what’s funny, when I turned 40, the same f–king guy said, ‘LeBron turned 40, this f–kery won’t go on much longer.’
“He’s going to be real upset when I turn 50.”
The man responsible for one of the most infamous tweets in NBA history has understandably had twinges of regret.
“There are many times I considered deleting the tweet,” Martin said with a laugh. “He was 30. And then 31, 32, 33, 34, 35 — and there was just no regression in sight.”
Now, things have only gotten worse for Martin.
The 41-year-old James, who’s the only NBA player to reach season 23, is trying to lead a Lakers team without Luka Doncic (hamstring) and Austin Reaves (oblique) past Kevin Durant and the Rockets in their first-round playoff series.
How’s it going?
The Lakers have a 2-0 lead and James has been the star of the series.
In Game 1, James had 19 points, a game-high 13 assists, eight rebounds, two steals and one blocked shot. In Game 2, he had a game-high 28 points, eight rebounds and seven assists.
“It’s kinda like pie in my face,” Martin said.
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Since turning 30, James has won two championships, made 10 All-Star teams, 10 All-NBA Teams and he became the league’s all-time leading scorer. He has had 80 of his 155 playoff games in which he had a 25/5/5 line since turning 30, more such performances than Michael Jordan had his entire postseason career (73). Last season, the 40-year-old was sixth in MVP voting.
Martin is reminded of James’ stunning longevity everyday.
“Anytime he has a good game, people retweet the comment,” he said. “Every single game. I look at my mentions, I look at my notifications, and it’s just people clowning the tweet. Every. Single. Game.
“It has almost like it’s a shrine for people now.”
Martin’s tweet actually went unnoticed for years.
Then, during the 2017 NBA Finals, Martin was trash-talking James on X when he pissed off the wrong Cavaliers fan, who went digging through his past tweets and unearthed that gem with a retweet.
The tweet was then reposted by the X account “Freezing Cold Takes” which has over 600,000 followers.
A viral sensation was born.
Over the years, the flame just kept being fanned.
By 2018, the tweet was all over the internet. Martin realized the extent of its reach when his son’s and daughter’s friends started seeing it on Instagram and saying, “Isn’t that your dad’s page?”
Things only got worse from there.
After James had a 47-point, 10-rebound and nine-assist performance on his 38th birthday on Dec. 30, 2022, the Instagram page House of Highlights (which has 51 million followers) posted the tweet alongside a photo of James pointing and laughing.
James then reposted it to his Instagram Story, adding a bunch of emojis of a face crying with laughter.
“Then it just took off,” Martin said. “It just went to another level.. Every six months, I’d see another publication just retweet, retweet, retweet.”
For Martin, things reached a screeching point when James led the Lakers past his Warriors in the second round of the 2023 playoffs.
“I’ve never seen so many notifications before on my phone,” Martin said. “It damn-near malfunctioned.”
Martin, however, decided to get in on the joke 10 years later on James’ birthday, posting on X, “Lebron is 40, this f–kery won’t go on for much longer, thank god,” That tweet has 3.3 million views.
Martin can laugh at everything now, even though his social media has been accosted by James’ fans.
He just has one wish going forward.
He doesn’t want the Lakers to beat the Rockets.
“If they do beat them, it’s just going to make the noise around LeBron even louder, which I dread,” he said with a laugh.
