NBA Rumors: Heat didn’t ask LeBron James about Shabazz Napier trade

The Miami Heat were said to have been targeting UConn guard Shabazz Napier on drat night and while they were unable to secure a trade before the draft that landed them a higher pick, they ended up making a trade anyways that landed them Napier late in the first round.

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Miami traded P.J. Hairston, who they selected with the No. 26 overall pick, to the Charlotte Hornets in exchange for Napier. There’s plenty of reasons the trade was made, but chief among those reasons seems to be how much LeBron James was in love with Napier all offseason long.

According to Brian Windhorst from ESPN.com though, the Heat didn’t consult LeBron about trading for Napier, although it wasn’t hard to tell how he felt about the situation.

The fact that the Heat didn’t consult LeBron isn’t all that surprising as he’s not part of the team right now and there’s no need to have that sort of contact. Plus, it’s not as though he didn’t make his feelings about Napier abundantly clear in the past so the Heat had a good idea of what the first stepping stone to getting LeBron to re-sign would be.

It will take more than Napier to bring LeBron back, but it’s the first step in the process of doing so which is good news for Heat fans who want to see the best player on the planet back in South Beach for the 2014-15 season.