Saying “violence isn’t the answer,” Cleveland Cavaliers star LeBron James criticized the rampant rioting in Ferguson, Missouri, and spoke out about the announcement that Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson was not being indicted for the August shooting of a local teenager.

James said that the decision not to indict officer Wilson for shooting teenager Michael Brown “hit close to home” with him.

After Tuesday’s announcement of the grand jury’s decision not to indict, James criticized rioters saying that their destructive attack on their own neighborhood is “not the answer.”

James maintained that the rioting doesn’t help the cause at all.

“What does that do?” he asked. “What does that actually do? Just hurt more families, hurt more people, draw more attention to things that shouldn’t even be going on instead of people going to the family’s household and praying with them. And saying, ‘Things are going to be great.’ You know, ‘Mike Brown is in a better place now,’ and ‘Trayvon Martin is in a better place now.’ That’s where it should be. I mean, burning down things and shooting up things and running cars into places and stealing and stuff like that, what does that do? It doesn’t make you happy.”

Once the rioting began, LeBron went to his Instagram account and posted a drawing depicting Trayvon Martin and Mike Brown arm in arm and noted in his message that “we can do better.”

“As a society how do we do better and stop things like this happening time after time!! I’m so sorry to these families. Violence is not the answer people. Retaliation isn’t the solution as well,” he wrote.

James then went on to insist that the problem isn’t just a Ferguson issue, that it is “much bigger than that.”

“It’s not just one instance,” James said. “It’s not just Mike Brown or Trayvon Martin or anything that’s going on in our society. I think it’s much bigger than that. Like I said last night, violence is not the answer and retaliation is not the solution. My prayers and best wishes goes out to the families of anyone that loses a loved one, especially a kid today.”

Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail.com