Kyrie Irving won the only championship of his career as a member of the Cleveland Cavaliers alongside LeBron James. Unfortunately, a rift in the pair’s relationship led to a split – culminating in some awkward encounters when they faced off as members of the Los Angeles Lakers and Brooklyn Nets.
This past week, Irving appeared on a podcast and addressed where his relationship with James stood.
The 30-year-old’s comments don’t leave much up for interpretation.
“Hey, shout-out to Bron,” Irving said. “He felt like I was slighting him, and I would never slight him in a way that would probably make him go and have to respond to things like that, you know what I mean? I respect the hell out of him. We’ve been through our own battles as teammates, as competitors together.”
Irving’s reference there is to a comment he made back in 2020 after joining the Nets. At the time, he seemed to praise his new teammate Kevin Durant at the expense of James.
Understandably, James felt some type of way about it.
In the years since, however – tensions cooled. So much so, in fact, that James parroted a conspiracy theory regarding Irving’s omission from the NBA’s 75 greatest players ever list and the Lakers considered acquiring Irving from the Nets earlier in the season.
NHL fans are built different. https://t.co/RYa2Sb98uD
— Game 7 (@game7__) May 9, 2022
Player beefs tend to have short shelf lives, and that appears to be the case here.
There was once ill will between James and Irving, but at this point it seems to have dissipated.
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