LeBron James opens up on Kyrie Irving’s bombshell trade

Kyrie Irving forced his way out of Cleveland to get away from LeBron James. Now we finally know what The King thought of the move.

LeBron James

Cleveland has suffered a staggering fall from grace since LeBron James set up shop on the West Coast with the Lakers. But according to The King, the Cavaliers’ decline started well before his departure and instead began with Kyrie Irving’s exit.

Irving demanded to be traded away from Cleveland last year, no longer willing to share the floor — and the spotlight — with James. So desperate was Irving to move he threatened to undergo knee surgery and sit out the 2017/18 season if the franchise rejected his request.

His angst towards James ran deep — Irving reportedly didn’t want James to return to Cleveland from Miami in 2014 after he left the Cavs for a championship-winning stint with the Heat. Irving had stepped up in James’s absence and didn’t want to be back playing second fiddle.

But despite the feud, James wanted Irving to stay, according to a report by Joe Vardon of The Athletic. The report claims as the Cavaliers considered granting Irving’s request, James was on the phone with general manager Koby Altman telling him not to let his then-teammate go.

The two stars might not have been best friends, but their on-court combination played a large part in the franchise’s success since James’s return from Florida, which included the 2016 NBA championship — the first title won by a professional Cleveland sports team in more than half a century.

“When Irving demanded to be traded in July 2017, he did so in large part because he no longer wanted to play with James,” Vardon wrote.

“Irving, in fact, told the Cavs he wanted out so badly he’d go ahead with knee surgery and miss a large portion of the year if he wasn’t traded. James, who did little to try to bridge the divide with Irving, told the Cavs to keep Irving in spite of his threats.”

Irving and James are no longer together.

But not even James could convince Cavs powerbrokers to keep the unhappy star on their books, and in a bombshell trade that rocked the NBA, Irving was sent to Boston in exchange for Isaiah Thomas, Jae Crowder and Ante Zizic.

That was the catalyst for everything at the Cavs to fall apart.

“Everyone knows that when Kyrie got traded it was the beginning of the end for everything. It’s not a secret,” James told The Athletic.

It was reported Altman had told James in their phone call Irving would not be traded, but James doesn’t hold the GM responsible, instead suggesting to The Athletic he was likely overruled by owner Dan Gilbert — who he had a frosty relationship with.

Against the odds Cleveland scraped through the playoffs the following season and made it to the NBA Finals without Irving. But as was the case in 2017, the star-studded Golden State Warriors were too powerful and scored another championship with a 4-0 series win.

It’s been all downhill since then. The Cavs are the worst performing team in the NBA with a 2-12 record and are on a rebuilding mission that started when the franchise blew up its roster before trade deadline earlier this year.

James’s new life with the Lakers hasn’t been all smooth sailing in an up-and-down season that has seen LA move to 9-7 and seventh in the Western Conference.

With the Cavs no longer a contender, Irving’s Celtics are expected to challenge for the Eastern Conference title. They lost out to Cleveland last year, going down 4-3 in the Eastern Conference finals, and will be desperate to go at least one step further this season.

But they’ll face stiff competition from the Philadelphia 76ers, who recently added four-time All-Star Jimmy Butler to a roster that already boasts Ben Simmons and Joel Embiid, as well as Toronto and Milwaukee, who have enjoyed strong starts to the season.

The former teammates are now opponents.

Originally published as LeBron James opens up on Kyrie Irving’s bombshell trade