LeBron James couldn’t get the co-stars he needed during his first stint with the Cleveland Cavaliers, but he tried his best to get them.
Prior to the 2010 free agency that led to LeBron’s departure to Miami, he reached out to Dallas Mavericks’ center Brendan Haywood to sign with the Cavaliers in free agency for less money. Haywood revealed how it went down with ‘King James.’
“When I was in Dallas, LeBron was thinking about going to Miami. Before he went to the Heat, he was recruiting guys to come to Cleveland. I get a text from a number that I don’t know. It’s LeBron. He says: “What’s up, this is King James.” It was a little weird he called himself King James but I kept going. He told me he was trying to get guys to come to the Cavs. He said he knew that they could not give me what I was going to get in the market. But he wanted to know if I would be willing to take a pay cut to be a part of something special. I wouldn’t have taken a pay cut to play with the ’92 Bulls. Buddy, you’re making $100 million off the court! This is my last hurrah! I hadn’t made enough money in my career to take a pay cut and chase a championship. I’d played so many playoff series against him that I saw him as another player. If you play in the league, you look at guys a little differently. He was younger than I was. I looked at him like he was anybody else.” (h/t HoopsHype)
Haywood made the right decision to not follow LeBron and re-sign with the Mavs, winning a championship on the 2011 roster that beat LeBron in the Finals. James had a historically bad performance in that series, being thoroughly outplayed by eventual Finals MVP, Dirk Nowitzki.
Haywood and LeBron would eventually become teammates on the 2014-15 Cavaliers roster.
LeBron James’ Early Origins As A GM
LeBron James is jokingly referred to as ‘LeGM’ for his penchant for putting together teams. Usually, it ends up working, with the Heat dynasty, the 2016 Cavaliers’ championship, and the 2020 Lakers’ championship as proof. Sometimes, it doesn’t. This was recently seen with the Russell Westbrook experiment on the Lakers.
James has become the face of the player empowerment era, with more players since forming competitive teams by discussing it with each other. While it has provided many downsides to the front office building teams, the Brooklyn Nets as a recent example, it has led to great success at other times (Draymond Green recruiting Kevin Durant to the Warriors).
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