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After spending the day riding the subway with his teammates, and leading the Cleveland Cavaliers to a 23-point comeback win against the New York Knicks, LeBron James took to Instagram to declare himself the king of New York.

  You're welcome.. 👑of NY #myfavoriteplayground #striveforgreatness🚀 A post shared by LeBron James (@kingjames) on Nov 14, 2017 at 7:26am PST

James has been taking bites at the Big Apple for the past few days. On Sunday, after the Cavs beat the Dallas Mavericks, LeBron commented that Mavs guard  Dennis Smith Jr. "should be a Knick, " adding, "The Knicks passed on a really good one, and Dallas got the diamond in the rough." 

On Monday, before the game at Madison Square Garden, James confirmed suspicions that his remarks about Smith Jr. were, in fact, "a shot at" former Knicks GM, Phil Jackson, not rookie guard Frank Ntilikina.

James and Jackson have been in a cold war of sorts since last November, when the former Bulls and Lakers coach referred to James' inner circle as a "posse."

Knicks forward Enes Kanter took particular offense to James' comments about his team's draft choices, and responded on Twitter.
 

During Monday night's games Kanter and James has a moment of confrontation after LeBron bumped Ntilikina near the end of the first quarter.

After the game, Kanter spoke about his conflict with the Cavs superstar: "[Ntilikina is] a rookie. You (James) call yourself 'King' or whatever. But you can't just mess with a rookie like that. If you're going to mess with [someone], go mess with the grown men. I'll die for my teammates. Whatever happens, I got my teammates' back because I see this team, this organization, like my family. Nobody is going to mess with it."

"I don't care who you are. What do you call yourself, 'King,' 'Queen,' 'Princess,' whatever you are. We're going to fight. Nobody out there is going to punk us. We went out there and played our game. We're going to go out there and get better every day."

A seemingly amused LeBron responded to Kanter, saying, "Well, I'm the King, my wife is the Queen and my daughter's the Princess, so we've got all three covered."