LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers are in complete and total disarray, and the star forward reportedly is very unhappy with the return the team got in the trade for Kyrie Irving.
The star guard demanded a trade this past offseason in order to get out of James’ shadow, and Cleveland ended up trading him to the Boston Celtics for Isaiah Thomas, Ante Zizic, Jae Crowder and the Brooklyn Nets’ 2018 first-round draft pick.
And as the Cavs continue their downward spiral, James reportedly is “pissed off” the Cavs didn’t pull the trigger on a trade that would have netted them a lot more than Thomas, according to ESPN’s Brian Windhorst.
“What’s really pissing LeBron off is that he felt like the Cavs could have gotten Paul George and Eric Bledsoe and they didn’t get them,” Windhorst said on Zach Lowe’s “The Lowe Post” podcast.
Windhorst noted that there are varying reports on how close that deal was, and that James’ unwillingness to commit long-term to Cleveland probably took it off the table. But, nonetheless, James is not happy with the outcome of the Irving trade.
“I’m just telling you, LeBron is there and he’s like, we could have had Eric Bledsoe and Paul George. Instead, we have a draft pick who I’m never going to meet — well I don’t know about that, but I’m not meeting him this year. And we have Isaiah Thomas who is very, clearly hampered, and we have Jae Crowder who is having the worst year of his career.
“And whether or not having Paul George and Eric Bledsoe would have made that much of a difference when it really matters, I don’t know. But I know that’s what LeBron thinks about because he knows that was on the table that they couldn’t execute back in June.”
While Irving has been the catalyst for the C’s impressive season thus far, Thomas just returned from a hip injury and has appeared to completely eliminate any on-court chemistry the Cavs had.
The electric guard has been a defensive liability, contributing to one of the worst defensive lineups in the NBA (James, Thomas, Crowder, J.R. Smith and Kevin Love) and has not meshed well with James or Love, both of whom perform better when Thomas is on the bench.
George, who is one of the top 15 players in the NBA, and Bledsoe certainly would have given this Cavs team a much different outlook, but now they are forced to try and fix the broken mess of a team before James likely bolts this summer.
