Last week, Dos Un told gave you the First Look at Lebron James’ historic cover feature on this month’s Vogue Magazine, becoming the first African-American Male in HISTORY to do so. Apparently ESPN.com columnist Jemele Hill (an African-American), took offense to it design calling the picture of LeBron and white supermodel Giselle Bundchen 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.”

Ok miss you may be going a bit far. When we first talked about the cover no one in our comments drew that conclusion. She further goes on to site the 2002 Sports Illustrated cover that featured Charles Barkley chained like a slave, the Ricky Williams wedding dress on an ESPN The Magazine and theTerrell Owens-Nicolette Sheridan ‘Monday Night Football‘ controversial bit as past experiences of black athletes being presented in photos as angry, overly aggressive, overly sexual, or just plain emasculated: ”

So what did Labron think about the cover? When first approached for reaction by his hometown Beacon Journal he said he was unaware of the story and said

“I was just having fun with it, I was just showing a little emotion. 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.”

I’d probably have to agree.