Lakers star LeBron James said that he felt slightly hurt after hearing former teammate Kyrie Irving's comments on his clutch abilities.
Lakers star LeBron James said he felt slightly hurt after hearing former teammate Kyrie Irving's comments that appeared to question James's clutch abilities.
"I was a little like, 'Damn.' Once I got the whole transcript, I was like, 'Damn,'" James said on an episode "Road Trippin' Podcast" with Richard Jefferson, Channing Frye and Allie Clifton that aired on Monday. "I wasn't like, 'Oh, you trippin'. I've hit game-winning shots my whole life.'...The whole time when I was [in Cleveland], I only wanted to see him be a MVP of our league. I only cared about his success. And it just didn't align. It just didn't align. And we were able to win a championship. That's the craziest thing. We were still able to win a championship, and we could never align. But I only cared about his well-being, both on and off the floor.
"And it kind of hurt me a little bit."
In October, Irving, who is now on his second teams after leaving James and the Cavaliers, said on the debut episode of his Nets teammate Kevin Durant's podcast, "The ETCs," that he felt as if Durant was the first player he was fully confident in to make late-game shots as well as he could.
Irving and James played together from 2014 to 2017, reaching three consecutive NBA finals and winning one championship. Irving and Durant are yet to appear in a game together.
"I had so much confidence in him," James said. "I actually told Kyrie, I told him at one point when we were playing together that if you were not a league MVP someday, then you were selling yourself short. Because that's how much I believed in him."
"It was part of the reason why I came back home. Besides the unfinished business, I came back home because I saw the talent in him."
Irving, a six-time All-Star, played just 20 games in his first season with the Nets.
James and the defending champion Lakers host Durant, Irving and the Nets in the first of two regular season matchups between the clubs on Feb. 18.