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LeBron James on Lance Stephenson rumors: 'I just want to win, man. I got no personal problems with nobody'
Smoke ‘em if you’ve got ’em, start ‘em if they once played at Kansas, find me all the help you can get and I’ll not only play nicely along them, but invite them over to try out this new Korean BBQ-thingy that the wife got me for Christmas.
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LeBron James isn’t laying out a Valentine’s Day list worth of love coupons for his potential future teammates, but he does appear to be working with a clean slate as the Cavs attempt to fill the most infamous open roster spot in NBA history.
The defending champs are working out, according to an ESPN report, former Miami Heat starter Mario Chalmers, ex-Laker notable Jordan Farmar, former Chicago Bulls mainstay Kirk Hinrich and all-around enfant terrible Lance Stephenson in the hopes that one of them could help take the ball-handling load off of the NBA’s biggest star and, recently, the league’s loudest mouth.
On Tuesday, our Dan Devine outlined the colorful pathway that led Lance and LeBron toward potentially working alongside each other in 2017. On Wednesday, James met with the media and promised to leave all baggage at the door when entering a room populated with new teammates.
Even Lance Stephenson. From ESPN’s Dave McMenamin:
“I got a history with all those guys except Jordan,” James said after shootaround Wednesday, as the Cavs prepared for their game against the Minnesota Timberwolves. “I got a history with Lance too, obviously. I got a history versus Kirk. I played him in a lot of playoff series. And I got a history with Rio [Chalmers]. … At the end of the day, Rio is recovering from his Achilles tear. I hope he’s been doing everything he needs to do just to get back on the floor. He loves to play the game.
“I’m a supporter of what this franchise wants to do, no matter what it’s doing. But my focus right now is to get our guys playing championship-level basketball.”
When asked specifically about Stephenson, after previously demurring his way toward a discussion about Chalmers (who teamed with LeBron to win two titles in Miami), James got to the point:
“I just want to win, man,” James said. “That’s all that matters to me. I got no personal problems with nobody.”
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A year after winning 57 games and the title, the Cavaliers are on pace for 56 wins, and the team remains 2 1/2 games up on the Boston Celtics for the top spot in the East. The Celtics remain unsettled in a way, still the subject of every boffo trade rumor that pops up, taking over the rumor mill role that the Toronto Raptors once benefitted from in the days of winnin’ and possibly tradin’ for Paul Millsap.
Neither team has dealt so far, and they’re battling for the right to take the second spot in the East alongside a wack-a-doo Atlanta Hawks team that already did Cleveland a favor in dealing Kyle Korver Ohio’s way, and a Washington squad that started the season 2-8, just now realizing that Marcus Thornton shouldn’t be taking part in any of this (choose your own “this”).
Still, the Cavaliers are fifth in offense but they often struggle to group together high-percentage shots around the basket in the half-court. LeBron James’ turnover rate is the highest of his career by a wide, wide margin (consider that, at the same age, Michael Jordan’s turnover rate halved that of LeBron’s 2016-17 mark), as he falls victim to his worst instincts offensively even on plays that don’t result in a miscue or missed basket. At times, when it counts, the Cavs look 2010-11-era Heat, “bad.”
Of course, Lance Stephenson doesn’t play point guard, even though (at 6-3 or so) he is point guard-sized. Neither does J.R. Smith, who can play and guard anywhere between three and zero possessions, depending on the sugar levels of whatever he ingested the night before contained. Smith’s continued absence due to thumb surgery has cost the Cavaliers dearly when it comes to countenance and actual results on the court.
The team has lost seven of 11 games, and it isn’t a big enough story that Tyronn Lue hasn’t even finished his first calendar year as an NBA head coach. LeBron James is needlessly averaging 37.5 minutes per game (tied for a league-high with Kyle Lowry) in a massive turnaround from the pace-and-space on the bench-ethos he’s encouraged in his two previous trips around the league with the Re-Bron’d Cleveland Cavaliers. This feels like a very January issue, nothing that will matter in May and June, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do something about it in February.
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Dan Devine also reminded us of James’ comments regarding J.R. from around the time New York gifted both Smith and Iman Shumpert Cleveland’s way during LeBron’s first year back in Ohio. On LeBron’s directive to his front office, via Brian Windhorst, from 2015:
“Get him here and I’ll take care of it,” James said Wednesday night, recalling the pivotal discussion.
[…]
“I knew the man he was and I didn’t really care about what everybody else thought of him,” James said. “Our front office, they have the last say. … I was definitely all for it.”
Of course, J.R. Smith never blew in LeBron James’ ear during a nationally-televised playoff game before. He was just someone else’s problem, on someone else’s team, and never someone to meet on the road to the NBA Finals.
Lance Stephenson, and to a far lesser extent Kirk Hinrich, is a bit more. And James seems down with it, and not down about it.
He also knows, of course, that Stephenson would act as a 12th man. As would Hinrich, who is but two years removed from this:
(That’s when Kirk Hinrich was younger.)
Mario Chalmers, meanwhile, is working his way back from what could be a career-stifling Achilles tear, and Jordan Farmar seems a long way removed from the time his unexpected draft announcement created a scholarship opening at UCLA for a high school senior named “Russell Westbrook.”
It could fall to Lance, whose baggage would cost double to check even if he hadn’t ever enjoyed a run in with James. If Wednesday’s acknowledgment is any indication, though, it appears as if LeBron James will do his damndest to stop the Cavaliers from falling as a result.
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Kelly Dwyer is an editor for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at KDonhoops@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!
