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Rihanna Steals LeBron James’ Thunder At NBA Finals

By Stacey Cole
Published on: 02:16 PST, Jun 2, 2017

Rihanna dabbed to her weight-shamers at the NBA Finals Game while looking #covfefe-free and watching “the king” LeBron James’s Cleveland Cavaliers playing against the Golden State Warriors.

Probably distracted by Rihanna’s appearance in her courtside seats and the “Work” signer dabbing and shouting out things during the game, LeBron James had his thunder stolen by Kevin Durant, who scored a game-high 38 points and helped his team slay the Cleveland Cavaliers with a 113-91 win.

While Durant certainly took away LeBron James’s thunder on the court, Rihanna stole his thunder everywhere beyond the court at the Oakland Arena in California on Thursday night.

Dazzling in an all-black ensemble, Rihanna took the front row of the Game 1 of the NBA finals and stole the attention from not only players (which explains LeBron James scoring only 28 points), but also distracting commentators from doing their job.

This was the case with ESPN/ABC commentator Jeff Van Gundy, who was busy fan-girling over seeing Rihanna in attendance.

Gundy couldn’t contain his excitement as he proclaimed, “Rihanna just walked in front of me!”

“Are you kidding me?”

While that certainly became the highlight of the game (at least for Gundy it did), all eyes were fixed on Rihanna for all the right reasons. (Look at the bottom of the screen in the video below to see Rihanna’s thunder power).

Known for her playful behavior at NBA games, Rihanna entertained the crowd by dabbing on them and joining the likes of comedian Kevin Hart and Jay Z to emotionally react to LeBron James not balling out – even despite social media users joking that Rih Rih’s appearance would certainly make the players sweat.

Rihanna came to root for LeBron James with her personal assistant, Jennifer Rosales, and the “Work” singer did not look bothered by all the weight-shaming speculations circulating on the Internet that claim the 29-year-old has allegedly gained weight.

Despite having the crowd all fired up about his performance in the NBA Finals and having the Oakland Arena cheer for him, it all came crashing down when LeBron James just couldn’t save his team from losing Game 1.

But Rihanna took LeBron James’s loss in stride and was captured on camera by Tony Zarrella of Cleveland 19 News saying, “It doesn’t matter, b*tch” and engaging in more trash talk with bystanders by saying, “the King is still the King, b*tch,” referring to LeBron James (not in the “b*tch” portion of the sentence, just to clarify).

Rihanna must have been binge-watching The Wire lately, as her “the King is still the King” phrase is eerily similar to the HBO show’s “The king stay the king” catchphrase, according to the Bleacher Report.

This isn’t the first time Rihanna has grabbed the media’s attention for attending an NBA Finals game. And this certainly isn’t the first game where Rih Rih has been rooting for LeBron James.

Back in 2015, when LeBron James’s Cavs were playing against the Warriors in the Finals, Rihanna reportedly was a very loud fan of James. The singer didn’t shy away from reportedly rooting very loudly for LeBron James despite being seated next to the owner of the opposing team, Joe Lacob.

Lacob spoke out about the infamous Rihanna incident during his chat with Chat Sports in June 2015, when he revealed that he even got “irritated” and told the singer, “I am the owner of the Warriors.”

Rihanna’s appearance at the NBA Finals on Thursday night sparked quite a furor on social media, with some users joking that the singer’s too prominent rooting for LeBron James got his wife, Savannah Brinson, all jealous.

[Featured Image by Ezra Shaw/Getty Images]

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