Kyrie Irving spoke to Kobe Bryant on avoiding LeBron James feud
Kyrie Irving spoke to his mentor Kobe Bryant about how to avoid break-up with LeBron James similar to his with Shaquille O’Neal.
Relationships between two people are a long process. There’s growing together; winning and losing as one; and of course evolving and coming into your own through the years. That’s the same type of evolution Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant went through, and their relationship ended on bad terms.
Their break-up is a huge “what if” in the basketball world, and that’s something Cleveland Cavaliers guard Kyrie Irving is trying to prevent alongside the biggest alpha of them all: LeBron James. Irving and James are two alphas that have become one of the league’s most formidable tandems, possessing all-time great talent and similar characteristics when it comes to winning and orchestrating a team.
Irving spoke with Dave McMenaim of ESPN about how he talked to his mentor in Bryant on how to avoid a similar break-up with James.
"It’s a tough balance,” Irving told ESPN. “Because everyone knows, Shaq was really dominant and [had] a lot of the individual accolades … unbelievable. And that’s who he was. And Kobe was just consistently working on his game and consistently trying to prove everyone all the time. And you got to commend somebody for that. That just shows the true testament of their will and what they’re willing to do and what they’re willing to sacrifice, but I know I don’t want to look back and say that I let my selfishness get in the way of us winning championships, because we have unbelievable talent on this team and unbelievable players, and so I don’t want to ever take that for granted.“Whenever that time comes and it’s my time to be the leader of the franchise, then I’ll be well-prepared. But for now, I’m cool with just being — I’m very, very cool with being — a great guy on a great team.”"
From what it looks like between James and Irving is they’ll be a duo until the former retires. The difference between those two and the dynamic of Shaq and Bryant is both James and Irving know the experience of being the solo guy on a team and losing. Irving has Bryant as a mentor and should know winning is the only option, and he can still light up opposing defenses in meaningful games. Such as the NBA Finals, against a loaded Warriors team his match-up, a two-time MVP in Stephen Curry.
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From the McMenaim post, what also stood out was David Griffin and Cavaliers brass not presenting James as a free-agent option back in 2014. An option no one would have thought was realistic until it actually happened. Griffin relayed Irving was in the role of recruiter with the general manager saying Gordon Hayward “wanted to come” to Cleveland, along with other options being Chandler Parsons, Channing Frye and Trevor Ariza.