LeBron James and Kyrie Irving were an amazing duo that won a title together in 2016 with the Cleveland Cavaliers. They weren’t teammates for too long, though, and their former head coach Tyronn Lue stated on The Stephen A. Smith Show that they would have won another if they had been together for more than three seasons.
“No question, no doubt,” Lue said when asked if the duo could have won another. “It did become harder once Golden State acquired Kevin Durant… Once they got KD, that was tough but I thought after we won the championship in 2016 we kind of had the blueprint (of) how we wanted to attack Golden State. How we wanted to guard and defend them.
“Like I said, they are a great team and Steve Kerr is one of the top coaches in the NBA as well, so it’s gonna be a tough task but we thought we figured (them) out after Game 2 in 2016,” Lue continued. “We figured out how we wanted to guard them, how we wanted to defend them and I thought definitely, Kyrie and LeBron would have won more championships.”
A competitor like Lue would always back his team to win, but the Cavaliers weren’t going to beat the Warriors once Kevin Durant arrived in 2016. Durant completely changed things and made Golden State a near-unstoppable force.
The Cavaliers, of course, beat the Warriors in seven games in the 2016 Finals but were then blown away in five games in 2017. James averaged 33.6 points, 12.0 rebounds, 10.0 assists, 1.4 steals, and 1.0 blocks per game in that 2017 series while Irving put up 29.4 points, 4.0 rebounds, 4.4 assists, and 1.0 steals per game but it was only enough to get one win.
Irving then handed in a trade request the following offseason to bring an end to his time as a teammate of James. They had made it to the NBA Finals in each of the three seasons they spent together from 2014-15 to 2016-17, but the guard didn’t want to continue the partnership and was traded to the Boston Celtics.
James and the Cavaliers would face the Warriors in the Finals again in 2018 and this time the series ended in a sweep. I do believe it would have been closer with Irving, but the final outcome wasn’t going to change.
Now, James and Irving could have potentially won in the following years, as injuries and Durant’s departure led to the Warriors’ demise. With LeBron having played at such an incredibly high level in the years that followed, I do not doubt that he and Kyrie could have won post-2018.
Kyrie Irving Thinks He And LeBron James Would Have Won More Titles If He Had Been More Mature
Lue isn’t the only one to believe that the James-Irving duo would have won more. Kyrie stated that his immaturity and isolation might have cost the Cavaliers more championships.
“If I was in the same maturity line and understanding of who I am, and I look back, we definitely, definitely would’ve won more championships,” Irving said. “Because there would’ve been a better man-to-man understanding about what I’m going through. I didn’t know how to share my emotions.”
“I didn’t know how to do that,” Irving continued. “So instead of sharing, I isolated myself. I just started pouring myself more into the game — I had one of my better seasons but I wasn’t connecting with everybody as much during the championship year. So 2017, it was a different year for us.
“We went against Golden State, we went against a great team,” Irving added. “When you’re not a great team and not clicking on all cylinders and together, you’re easily defeated. You’re defeated before you can get to the arena.”
Don’t we all wish we would have done things differently in the past when we were a bit immature? There have been rumblings of an Irving-James reunion in recent years, as they both seem interested in it, but it hasn’t happened yet and I doubt it ever will.
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