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Police are investigating after someone spray-painted a racial slur on the front gate of NBA superstar LeBron James' Los Angeles home on the eve of the finals.
An unidentified person spray-painted the N-word on the front gate of James' home in the Brentwood neighbourhood, a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles Police Department said.
James was not at the home at the time as his Cleveland Cavaliers are in Oakland for the first two games of the NBA Finals against Golden State, but the property manager told officers they believe the incident was captured on surveillance video, Captain Patricia Sandoval said.
Police are investigating it as an act of vandalism and possible hate crime.
Someone painted over the slur before officers arrived to investigate, Captain Sandoval said.
James appeared distressed as he spoke to the media ahead of the first game of the finals series.
"My family is safe, at the end of the day they're safe and that's the most important," he said.
"But it just goes to show that racism will always be a part of the world, a part of America.
"Hate in America, especially for African-Americans, is living every day. Even though it's concealed most of the time, you know people hide their faces and will say things about you and when they see you they smile in your face, it's alive every single day."
James said he was "OK with" the incident if it "shed a light" on the racial issues still present in the United States, even evoking the fatal lynching of Emmett Till in 1955.
The 14-year-old African-American was horrifically beaten, shot and thrown into a river with a fan tied to him with barbed wire.
The two white men accused of his death were found not guilty by an all-white jury in Mississippi and James said Till's mother was one of the first things he thought of after the incident.
"The reason she had an open casket [at the funeral] is because she wanted to show the world what her son went through as far as a hate crime and being black in America," he said.
"It's like … no matter how much money you have, no matter how famous you are, no matter how many people admire you, being black in America is tough.
"We've got a long way to go for us as a society and for us as African-Americans until we feel equal in America."
James bought the house in 2015 for over $US20 million, but the 9,440-square-foot home is not his primary residence. He lives in Bath, Ohio.
In 2015, James and his production company signed a developmental deal with Warner Brothers worth $US15 million that meant he spends more time in Southern California.
James spent several weeks in Los Angeles last summer working with his production company, but said he would not be with his children — sons LeBron Jr, 12, and Bryce Maximus, nine, and daughter Zhuri, two — for a week.
"My little girl's too young to understand it right now, but I can't sit in front of my boys right now and I won't be home until next week," he said.
"This is kind of killing me inside right now, but my wife is unbelievable. My mother, my mother-in-law, my sister-in-law, they're doing a great job of talking to them."
AP/ABC
Topics: basketball, race-relations, discrimination, sport, united-states