September 4, 2012|By Ira Winderman, South Florida Sun Sentinel
MIAMI â€"    While LeBron James holds an ownership stake in Premier League mainstay Liverpool, the Miami Heat power forward apparently is not also the British soccer team's social director.
   In the wake of dual newspaper reports in England about James offering Liverpool players a Las Vegas celebration with Kanye West in return for on-field success, both James' U.S.-based publicist and Liverpool officials shot down the reports.
  "The stories posted. Liverpool was asked about it. They followed up with our team. We told them the quotes weren't in fact LeBron's, and it got taken down," U.S.-based Adam Mendelsohn on Tuesday told the Sun Sentinel, emphasizing that the action was taken by Liverpool officials and not specifically under James' orders.
  Both "The Sun" and the "Daily Mail" had posted stories that quoted James as saying, "Everybody in sport needs incentive and if the guys at Liverpool win something this year I will give them the best weekend of their life in Vegas. Kanye is in and trust me, nobody does Vegas like LeBron and Kanye."
  The story also included a quote attributed to James that read, "We will take them to places in Vegas 99 percent of people don't even know exist. There is Vegas and then there is Vegas.
  "I am coming over to see a game soon with Kanye and Jay-Z so maybe we can talk more about the trip then."
  The British media had extensive access to James during the London Olympics, in a "mixed zone" interview area that allows journalists and athletes to talk for a specified period following events in a largely unstructured setting.
 James and the United States won basketball gold at the London Games.
iwinderman@tribune.com. Follow him at twitter.com/iraheatbeat
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