LeBron James Responds To Kyrie Irving's Shady Comments About Clutch Shots

Kyrie Irving is always a lightning rod for controversy and he never seems to get enough of it.

Source: Mike Stobe / Getty

LeBron James and Kyrie Irving once won the most improbable NBA championship of all time. Literally. Being down 3-1 in a playoff series is all but a death nail and being down like that in the Finals is essentially a guaranteed loss. For much of his NBA career, Kyrie has been a loser. Not in the sense that he isn’t immensely talented and proves that fact night in and night out, but in the sense that he literally loses regardless of his gaudy box score. LeBron James taught Kyrie how to win and showed him what it takes to take hold of victory. For his part, Kyrie played a pivotal role in the 2016 Cleveland Cavaliers snatching said victory from the jaws of defeat by making an ice-cold 3-ball to secure the never-before-seen 3-1 comeback against the Golden State Warriors.

That shot vaulted Kyrie into NBA lore and obviously injected him with supreme confidence that he could get the job done in the clutch as long as he had someone to get him to the clutch. During the debut episode of Kevin Durant’s “The Etcs” podcast, Kyrie made a pretty bold proclamation that was unabashedly shady toward LeBron according to ESPN:

“One thing I’ve always been comfortable with, I felt like I was the best option on every team I played for down the stretch,” Irving said on the podcast. “This is the first time in my career I’ve looked down and be like, ‘That motherf—er can make that shot too.’ And he’ll probably do it a lot easier.

“It’s not so much deferring, because in past situations where I didn’t take the last shot, I felt guilty. I want this game-winning shot, but also, you want to trust your teammates. Not that I didn’t trust my teammates, but I felt like I was the best option.”

For weeks, LeBron bit his tongue and continued on his mission to win his fourth ring, while Kyrie sat at home. Now, that LBJ has that ring, he can double-back and address lil’ Kyrie’s comment. He took the opportunity on the Road Trippin’ podcast to do so. It goes a little somethin’ like this:

“I was a little like, ‘Damn.’ Once I got the whole transcript, I was like, ‘Damn,'” James said, adding that he made sure to read Irving’s full comments before reacting to them. “I wasn’t like, ‘Oh, you trippin’. I’ve hit game-winning shots my whole life.’ I was not like that. I was like, ‘Damn.’ Because … I played with Kyrie for three seasons [with the Cleveland Cavaliers]. The whole time when I was there, I only wanted to see him be a MVP of our league. I only cared about his success. And it just didn’t align. It just didn’t align. And we were able to win a championship. That’s the craziest thing. We were still able to win a championship, and we could never align. But I only cared about his well-being, both on and off the floor.

“And it kind of hurt me a little bit.”

Kyrie tried to play damage control in the days after his quip but the toothpaste was already out of the tube.

The nerve of lil’ Kyrie to fix his mutha-flat-earthing face…smh.