The Cavaliers are finally clicking after a slower-than-expected start to the season, and the relationships between the star players on the team have been somewhat solidified.
But it didn’t start out that way.
It took some time for LeBron James and Kyrie Irving to get on the same page; there were reported confrontations after some early-season losses, and James admonished Irving after a game in which he scored 34 points -- because he finished it with zero assists.
From Joe Vardon of Cleveland.com:“He came up to me and was like, ‘One, you can never have another game with no assists,’ ” Irving said, describing James’ words. “ ‘You can damn near have just one, two, three, but you can’t have zero.’ And I was like, ‘All right, cool, it won’t happen again.’ And it hasn’t happened since that game.” ...
“Friends or no friends, at the end of the day we’re all here to do one thing, and that’s to win,” James said to the Northeast Ohio Media Group. ...
“I don’t want to say it’s not been rocky at all,” Irving said. “Obviously, he sees the game one way, I see the game another way. What makes it great about being on the team is that we both can see it together in our own way.”
There’s plenty more in the piece from both James and Irving, discussing how their relationship has evolved.
But really, it can be boiled down to this: Cleveland is 29-7 since Jan. 15, and when the wins are coming at better than an 80 percent clip, there’s far less to argue about.
