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LeBron James Was 'Crushed' After Cavs Traded Kyrie Irving in 2017, Ty Lue Says


Cleveland Cavaliers fans might not want to hear what former head coach Tyronn Lue had to say during a conversation with Shannon Sharpe that was released Wednesday.

Lue is currently the head coach of the Clippers, but he held the same position for the Cavaliers from the middle of the 2015-16 campaign until he was fired six games into the 2018-19 season. Part of that time overlapped with LeBron James and Kyrie Irving being teammates, but that came to an end when Cleveland traded Irving to the Boston Celtics after the 2017 NBA Finals.

Lue said Irving "had made his mind up," he wanted to leave the Cavaliers (1:53:15 mark), but it was his comments about James' reaction that stood out the most.

"LeBron was doing an autograph signing with jerseys and stuff for his foundation," Lue said. "So I come sit next to Bron, we're sitting there, hand him the phone, SportsCenter says Kyrie Irving's just been traded to the Boston Celtics. Man, Bron dropped the marker, just lays back in his chair for about 10 minutes and doesn't say a word. Just pissed off. Bron was crushed."

Lue also said he believes James would have remained with the Cavaliers had Irving stayed.

Cleveland reached three straight NBA Finals and won the 2016 title during the three seasons James and Irving played together. It also advanced to the 2018 NBA Finals with just James, although it lost and the King then joined the Los Angeles Lakers for the next season.

James won the 2020 championship with Los Angeles.

Irving, who is now on the Dallas Mavericks, didn't seem to have many regrets as he explained his mindset at the time of the trade request away from Cleveland on a Twitch stream earlier this month.

"When you're playing with someone like [James], or somebody you like to compare him to, it's a different animal," Irving said (h/t Jasmyn Wimbish of CBS Sports). "It's a different journey, you're automatically expected to be at the top of the league. Every time you play with [James] it's going to be a lot of media attention, a lot of narratives, spun narratives, politics, a lot of s--- that people don't see in front of the camera. And for me I was just a young person trying to figure it out. It's not that I disliked playing with [James] at any time, it was just literally my time to move on."

Perhaps the Cavaliers would have won another championship or two if Irving and James stayed together. Or perhaps things would have eventually fallen apart as Irving struggled to play under James' shadow.

It is all hypothetical because Cleveland traded the guard to Boston.

That it was the Celtics likely also didn't sit well with James, who has battled the Eastern Conference team throughout his career and surely saw as a rival at the time.

Given that context, it comes as no surprise he reacted like he did.

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