LeBron James had no idea that his Vogue cover with supermodel Gisele Bundchen was being criticized by a columnist and commentator for ESPN.

The Cleveland Cavaliers star is the third man – and first African American male - to grace the cover of the famous fashion magazine. But those historical achievements were lost on ESPN.com columnist Jemele Hill, who said the picture of LeBron and Giselle is just another case of "the black athlete being reduced to savage."

"LeBron has Gisele in one hand and a basketball in the other. LeBron is dressed in basketball gear, with his muscles flexing, tattoos showing and bared teeth. Gisele, on the other hand, is wearing a gorgeous slim-fitting dress, and smiling," she wrote in her Page 2 column on ESPN.com. "She looks like she's on her way to something fashionable and exciting. He looks like he's on his way to a pickup game for serial killers.       

"Now, maybe the point was to show the contrast between brawn and beauty, masculinity versus femininity, strength versus grace. But Vogue's quest to highlight the differences between superstar athletes and supermodels only successfully reinforces the animalistic stereotypes frequently associated with black athletes.       

"A black athlete being reduced to a savage is, sadly, nothing new. But this cover gave you the double-bonus of having LeBron and Gisele strike poses that others in the blogosphere have noted draw a striking resemblance to the racially charged image of King Kong enveloping his very fair-skinned lady love interest."

James, who was unaware of the story, shrugged off the comments.      

"I was just having fun with it, I was just showing a little emotion," James said Saturday, according to Ohio's Beacon Journal. "We had a few looks and that was the best one we had. Everything my name is on is going to be criticized, in a good way or a bad way. Who cares, honestly, at the end of the day."      

James said he had phone working with famed photographer Annie Leibovitz, who did the photo shoot in his Akron hometown.       

"I am happy with it, absolutely," James said.      

Hill's column also notes past experiences of black athletes being presented in photos as angry, overly aggressive, overly sexual, or just plain emasculated: "The 2002 Sports Illustrated cover that featured Charles Barkley chained like a slave. Ricky Williams wearing a wedding dress on an ESPN The Magazine cover in 1999. And while it didn't appear in a magazine, the Terrell Owens-Nicolette Sheridan intimate-encounter tease for 'Monday Night Football' gave viewers a sexualized image of a black man."