MIAMI (AP) ― LeBron James was welcomed at Dwyane Wade’s wedding last month. Udonis Haslem continues to maintain a friendship with his former teammate. Chris Andersen still wears his sneakers.
There’s no venom, no hatred, not even trash-talking.
There isn’t much of anything, to be perfectly frank.
There’s no venom, no hatred, not even trash-talking.
There isn’t much of anything, to be perfectly frank.
So when the Miami Heat and Cleveland Cavaliers ― James’ former team against James’ former-turned-current team ― meet in a preseason game Saturday in Rio de Janeiro, it won’t be some sort of streetfight, one team enraged because the player who helped them to four straight NBA Finals left to go back to his hometown team.
Besides, it’s not like it counts, anyway.
“I’m sure everyone will try their best,” said Heat forward Chris Bosh, who raised some eyebrows Tuesday night when he said he hasn’t talked to James since he returned to the Cavaliers. “Not right now, but on Christmas Day.”
That’s the first “real” meeting with James as a Heat opponent again, when Cleveland visits Miami on one of the league’s biggest days, and surely that will be a matchup that commands much more fanfare than this one will. The Miami vs. Cleveland matchup in Brazil barely registered a blip when announced in April, and like most preseason games, the outcome of this one will likely be forgotten long before the regular season opens at the end of the month.
“I think everybody is very cognizant of the fact that LeBron is playing against his old team and playing against a team where he had such great success and they had such great success,” Cavaliers coach David Blatt said Tuesday, before his team departed on its charter flight for Brazil. “And I’m sure, I’m sure, they understand that it’s a particular kind of game.”
Blatt was asked if it helps that the game will be played on a neutral site, far from Miami, even farther from Cleveland.
“I think it takes the pressure off of both sides, actually,” Blatt said. “I really do.”
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Articles by Korea Herald