LeBron James says he has lost respect for Phil Jackson after the famed NBA coach used the word posse to describe the Cleveland star's business partners.
James responded harshly on Tuesday to Jackson's use of the term in a recent interview.
James says such comments underscore the difficulties young African-Americans have in gaining respect, especially in the business world.
The Cavaliers superstar says he had no previous relationship with Jackson, the current New York Knicks president who won 11 titles with the Chicago Bulls and Los Angeles Lakers.
James added that he respected what Jackson did with those teams, "but I've got nothing for him."
In the interview, Jackson said James has always demanded preferential treatment and called his departure from Miami as a free agent a "slap in the face" to the Heat organisation.
Jackson recalled a time when James asked for the team to stay over in Cleveland while on a road trip, a request that put coach Erik Spoelstra in a bind.
"You can't hold up the whole team because you and your mom and your posse want to spend an extra night in Cleveland," Jackson said in the ESPN interview.
The word "posse" struck a chord with James, who has surrounded himself with childhood friends during his career.
Jackson's language also touched a flash point at a time of heightened racial tension in the country.
The Knicks executive is 71 and white and long tied to the flower power counter-cultural trappings from more than a generation ago.
For him to now brand James' partners with a term better suited for black gangsta culture crossed a racial divide James was unwilling to accept.
"We see the success that we have, but then there is always someone that lets you know how far we still have to go as African-Americans," James said on Tuesday following the Cavaliers' morning shootaround.
"I don't believe that Phil Jackson would have used that term if he was doing business with someone else and working with another team or if he was working with anybody in sports that was owning a team that wasn't African-American and had a group of guys around them that didn't agree with what they did.
"I don't think he would have called them a posse. But it just shows how far we have to go."
Along with close friends Maverick Carter, Rich Paul and Randy Mims, James has built a sports business empire. Among the group's most prominent successes are landing James a lifetime contract with Nike worth nearly $1 billion and launching a film and TV production company that has partnered with Warner Bros.
The Cavs play the Knicks on December 7 in Madison Square Garden, a game surely to be intensified by the Jackson-James drama.
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