LeBron James says Kyrie Irving‘s comment suggesting Kevin Durant is the first teammate he’s been comfortable sharing the ball with at the end of a close game “kind of hurt me a little bit.”
Irving made the comment on Durant’s podcast back in October, on an episode released during the NBA Finals, saying “One thing I’ve always been comfortable with, I felt like I was the best option on every team I played for down the stretch.”
James was given the chance to respond to his former Cleveland Cavaliers teammate’s comments in an appearance on the Road Trippin’ podcast with Richard Jefferson, Channing Frye and Allie Clifton Monday.
“I was a little like, ‘Damn.’ 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 a 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. 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.”
James and Irving were teammates for three years from 2014-17, reaching the Finals each year and winning the 2016 title after a stunning rally from down three games to one against the Golden State Warriors. In his interview Monday, James still had praise for Irving and said the point-guard was one of the reasons he returned to Cleveland after his brief stint with the Miami Heat.
“Ky is one of the most talented players I’ve ever played with in my life. The kid — I don’t even want to call him ‘kid.’ He’s not a kid anymore, but back then, he was. He was a young kid still growing into his own, and the s— that he was capable of on the floor I had never seen before,” James said. “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.”
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