The Cleveland Cavaliers held their annual media day this past Friday, which featured “that guy” LeBron James, as Mario Chalmers likes to call him nowadays.
Like Chalmers, there’s still a lot of hurt and disappointed individuals in South Beach over LeBron’s departure, but now it’s time to move on for both parties.
LeBron is excited for this new chapter of his career. Obviously, returning to northeast Ohio played a major role in his decision, but also the opportunity to play alongside Kyrie Irving was a factor. During LeBron’s career, he’s had the likes of Mo Williams, Eric Snow and Mario Chalmers as point guards just to name a few.
Now, LeBron has the privilege of having a 2-time all-star, which he plans to take full advantage of.
“I’ll probably handle the ball a little bit, but this is Kyrie [Irving’s] show,” James said Saturday following the Cavs’ first practice of training camp. “He’s our point guard. He’s our floor general and we need him to put us in position to succeed offensively. He has to demand that and command that from us with him handling the ball.”
It’s good to see LeBron instilling confidence in his young point guard, but we all know LeBron will handle a good portion of the ball-handling duties.
Many are hesitate to thrust Kyrie into the elite category of point guards, considering he’s never sniffed the postseason. At the same time, Kyrie has never had elite talent around him like Chris Paul, Damian Lillard, Russell Westbrook and etc. With LeBron and Love intact, that excuse no longer holds weight.
However, how will Kyrie fair off the ball?
He seems to have no worries about sharing with LeBron.
“I’ll be ready to shoot every single time,” Irving said with a laugh when asked about James playing point guard. “If I’m off the ball, I’m ready to shoot. Whatever it takes. Whatever it takes to win. Obviously he’s the greatest player playing the game right now, so if he’s on the ball, like I said, I’ll be ready to shoot. But if I’m on the ball, my job is to get everybody involved and make plays.”
Although Kyrie is a more than capable shooter, his numbers have been less than impressive. He shot 35.6 percent in catch and shoot situations, while only shooting 35.8 percent from distance last season. It’s important to note that Kyrie was asked to do a lot, but with LeBron and Love, Irving should have fresher legs, which hopefully prevents another nagging injury.
Dating back to his time at Duke, Kyrie has had a troubling history of injuries. At Duke, he only played in 11 games due to a toe injury. His laundry list of injuries consist of a concussion, sprained right shoulder, broken hand, broken index finger, fracture jaw, hyperextended knee, sprained left shoulder, right nasal fracture and bruised knee.
Out of 246 possible NBA games, Irving has missed 65 of them. That’s a lot of missed games for a 22-year old, which has people concerned for his future.
It’ll be interesting to see how Kyrie and LeBron co-exist, but if you’re Cavs head coach David Blatt, this is a good problem to have.
“I’ve never been one to pay particular attention to the position definition,” Blatt said Saturday. “I like to play with ball guards. You could easily define LeBron as a ball guard, as well as Dion [Waiters] as well as Kyrie and others.”
One things for sure, Cleveland will be an exciting team to watch.