LeBron James admits he was “hurt” by Kyrie Irving’s October comments suggesting fellow Brooklyn Nets star Kevin Durant is the first teammate he’d “trust” as much as himself to take big shots at the end of games.
James, who played with Irving for three seasons with the Cleveland Cavaliers from 2014-17, finally addressed his former teammate’s quotes on the Road Trippin’ podcast with Richard Jefferson, Channing Frye and Allie Clifton released Monday on Spectrum SportsNet.
“Once I got the whole transcript, I was like, ‘Damn,’” James said. “I wasn’t like, ‘Oh, you trippin’. I’ve hit game-winning shots my whole life.’ I was not like that. I was like, ‘Damn.’ Because … I played with Kyrie for three seasons.
“The whole time when I was there, I only wanted to see him be an MVP of our league. I only cared about his success. And it just didn’t align. It just didn’t align. And we were able to win a championship [in 2016]. That’s the craziest thing. We were still able to win a championship, and we could never align. But I only cared about his well-being, both on and off the floor. And it kind of hurt me a little bit.”
Irving was traded from Cleveland to Boston in 2017 before teaming up with the injured Durant as free agents in Brooklyn in 2019.
LeBron James could not believe Kyrie Irving’s latest comments
The two Nets stars have yet to play a game together, but Irving said on his current teammate’s podcast “The Etcs” in October – while James and the Los Angeles Lakers were on their way to defeating the Miami Heat in the NBA Finals – that “I felt like I was the best option on every team I played for down the stretch” until now.
“This is the first time in my career I’ve looked down and be like, ‘That motherf–ker can make that shot, too.’ And he’ll probably do it a lot easier,” Irving said of Durant. “It’s not so much deferring, because in past situations where I didn’t take the last shot, I felt guilty.
“I want this game-winning shot, but also, you want to trust your teammates. Not that I didn’t trust my teammates, but I felt like I was the best option.”
Irving later insisted he wasn’t singling out James, saying “if I’m addressing anyone, I’ll say their name.” Last week, he declined to speak directly with the media, instead issuing a statement “to ensure that my message is conveyed properly.”
Still, LeBron clearly took Irving’s jabs personally.
“It was a f—ed up time. Because it was the Finals…the middle of the Finals,” James said. “When I was seeing that and I read it, and then I got the full transcript and I heard it, I was like, ‘Man, f–k.’ I was like, ‘Are you f—ing kidding me’… I was like, ‘G-d damn.’”
James added that part of the reason he returned to Cleveland in 2014 after winning two championships with the Miami Heat was because he believed he and Irving would bring an elusive title to his hometown team.
“Ky is one of the most talented players I’ve ever played with in my life,” James said. “He’s not a kid anymore, but back then, he was. He was a young kid still growing into his own, and the s–t that he was capable of on the floor, I had never seen before.
“I had so much confidence in him. I actually told Kyrie, I told him at one point when we were playing together that if you were not a league MVP someday, then you were selling yourself short. Because that’s how much I believed in him. And it was part of the reason why I came back home. Besides the unfinished business, I came back home because I saw the talent in him.”
