The 2016 Cavaliers got back together this week for the 10-year anniversary of their championship. One key member of the team was missing, and it was not by accident.
Kevin Love posted a series of Instagram photos showing the reunion. LeBron James was there. Channing Frye was there. Tristan Thompson was there. JR Smith was there. They hit Tower Bridge in London, played Loch Lomond Golf Club in Scotland, drank wine, and roasted each other for five straight days.
Kyrie Irving was not there. According to Smith, he was invited and never responded.
“We hit him up,” Smith said in a video posted from the trip. “He just ghosted us.” Tristan Thompson laughed. LeBron stayed mostly quiet but appeared in the photos with everyone else.
This is awkward. Kyrie hit the most famous shot in Cavaliers history. Game 7 of the 2016 NBA Finals. Stepback three over Steph Curry. Cleveland’s first championship in any major sport in 52 years. None of that happens without Irving.
The relationships, though, have been a long story. Kyrie left Cleveland in 2017 because he wanted out of LeBron’s shadow. He had public conflict with LeBron and several teammates over the years. Then they reconciled, sort of, when Kyrie ended up in Dallas with Luka Doncic and went back to the Finals in 2024.
Skipping the reunion looks worse because the public reconciliation with LeBron was supposed to mean something. There were Instagram stories of the two of them training together. There was a public message of respect. Then this week, when the rest of the championship team came calling, Kyrie did not pick up the phone.
Kevin Love made a joke out of it. He posted a story poking fun at Kyrie not showing up. The undercurrent is real, though. These guys were brothers for two years. They went to three straight Finals. They created the most iconic Game 7 in modern NBA history. The fact that Kyrie cannot pick up the phone in 2026 says everything about who Kyrie has always been.
This is not new for Irving. He has a long history of being unreachable when teammates want him. The Boston end was ugly. The Brooklyn end was uglier. Dallas has been the smoothest stop of his career, but even there, the people around him admit he operates on his own clock.
The 2016 Cavaliers will have these stories for the rest of their lives. The trip looked incredible. The bond was clearly real. They all wished Kyrie was there. He chose not to be.
That is the choice. Years from now, when someone makes a documentary about Cleveland’s first ring, there will be footage of this reunion. Kyrie will be conspicuously absent. He had every chance to show up and own his place in that history. He passed.
It is his prerogative. It also tells you exactly who he is.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
