When Kyrie Irving requested a trade from the Cleveland Cavaliers in July 2017, it sent shockwaves around the NBA. It came just a year after the Cavaliers pulled off the greatest comeback in NBA Finals history, climbing back from a 3-1 deficit against the Golden State Warriors to capture the franchise’s first championship.
Irving played instrumental role in that championship, knocking down a clutch, go-ahead 3-pointer in Game 7 with just under a minute left, which became the shot that won the Cavaliers the game. But just 13 months after hoisting the Larry O’Brien trophy, Irving requested a trade from Cleveland, with reports surfacing that he no longer wanted to play with LeBron James. Irving wanted to be the main star on his own team, and with James in Cleveland, that was never going to be a possibility. And while the rumors snowballed into Irving not liking James, the nine-time All-Star is setting the record straight all these years later.
“When you’re playing with someone like [James], or somebody you like to compare him to, it’s a different animal,” Irving said on a Twitch stream. “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.”
Irving played three seasons with James in Cleveland, following the four-time champions return to the city after spending the previous four seasons with the Miami Heat. It coincided with Irving’s fourth year in the league, as he established himself as one of the NBA’s young bright stars. He already earned two All-Star appearances before James came back to the Cavaliers, and was the centerpiece of Cleveland’s team for the first three years after they drafted him No. 1 overall in 2011. Irving went from being “The Guy” on the Cavaliers, to playing second, sometimes third fiddle on a Cleveland team that also added Kevin Love in the summer of 2014 to form a Big 3 in hopes of winning a championship.
“I would’ve loved to choose the franchise I wanted to go to,” Irving said. “I would’ve loved to develop next to some of my favorite players. Being a young player, when you’re on a team that’s not winning a lot of games, it’s a lot of bad habits that form, and that’s what ended up happening to me when I was very young. I had a lot of bad habits. I was not a winner, I was not a good loser at all. I take my accountability, I had a lot of bad habits. That came from losing games and trying to get buckets all the time. I know it may have been beautiful for everybody to watch and getting all the highlights and accolades, but all I really wanted to do was win.”
The years Irving and James played together and Cleveland represent the most successful stint in his career. He managed to get back to the NBA Finals again Mavericks in 2024, but struggled to find that same level of sustained success he had in Cleveland with the Celtics and Nets. It may not have been how he would have liked, and perhaps he preferred to start his career elsewhere, but being an NBA champion is better than never winning one at all. Though from the sounds of it, Irving preferred to do it his way.
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