LeBron James enjoyed tremendous success during his time with the Miami Heat, but it turns out his early days with the franchise were quite rough. ESPN’s Dave McMenamin revealed that things were so bad that James was reduced to tears one night and wondered if he had made a mistake going to the Heat in 2010.
“His mind was spiraling. His decision just a few months earlier to leave the Cleveland Cavaliers, the franchise that drafted him as a teenager to play just 45 minutes from his hometown in Akron, Ohio, already felt like the wrong one.
“He picked up the phone and dialed someone he knew would answer — someone who for nearly a decade had done so: his longtime confidant, Randy Mims.
“‘I’m coming over,’ James told him. ‘I need to talk to you.’ It was just after 3 in the morning.
“Mims hardly had enough time to throw on clothes as James made the 10-minute drive from his hotel to Mims’ place in nearby Coconut Grove. When Mims emerged from his front door, he found a burgundy Bentley in the driveway. James, just 25 at the time, had parked himself on the hood. He was crying.”
“‘I’m not sure I’m doing this right,’ James said. ‘I’m not sure I made the right decision to come here.'”
James was dealing with one too many issues at the time. The Heat were supposed to become this unstoppable juggernaut when he arrived to form a Big 3 with Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh but they had just a 9-8 record after 17 games in 2010-11.
James was lonely as well. His then-girlfriend and now-wife, Savannah, and their two children, Bronny and Bryce, were still living in Cleveland. Not only did he miss his family, but he missed staying at home too, as he was living in a hotel.
To go with all this, James had also become public enemy No. 1 for leaving the Cleveland Cavaliers and forming a superteam in Miami. He had gone from being one of the more beloved athletes who had all his loved ones by his side to a hated figure who was all alone and playing for a team that was failing to live up to expectations.
It isn’t too surprising then that James thought he might have made a mistake. Fortunately, that conversation with Mims gave him the belief that he could get through all that.
“It was just a lot of s— that was just going on in my head,” James told ESPN of that night. “I was still young. … I was questioning myself. I know I probably startled the f— out of him at like three o’clock, four o’clock in the morning. I pulled up and I told him to come outside and I literally sat on the hood of my car. He came out and we just talked things through.”
Things would eventually get better for James. The Heat would go on to win 58 games that season but did shockingly lose in the NBA Finals to the Dallas Mavericks. It was the low point of James’ NBA career but he bounced back in style.
James led the Heat to back-to-back titles in 2012 and 2013, winning MVP and Finals MVP on both occasions. He took them to the NBA Finals for the fourth straight year in 2014, but the San Antonio Spurs won in five games to end the dream of a three-peat.
James left the Heat the following offseason, having averaged 26.9 points, 7.6 rebounds, 6.7 assists, 1.7 steals, and 0.7 blocks per game in four seasons. He returned to the Cavaliers and made amends for leaving in 2010 by leading them to their first title in 2016.
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