Cleveland Cavaliers superstar LeBron James has expressed his frustration after his team absorbed a 101-82 loss to the Portland Trail Blazers on Tuesday, calling out his teammates to start playing unselfish basketball in order for them to achieve their ultimate goal of winning a championship.
James, who made his return in Cleveland to lead the Cavs to their first-ever NBA title, admitted that there's still a lot of things to address before they reached their full potential as a team.
The four-time NBA MVP reiterated that it's going to be a long process but his teammates must learn how to share the ball, defend and make sacrifices for them to easily win games.
"Everyone wants to win, I would hope," James said in an interview with ESPN. "Would you rather play selfish basketball and lose, or play unselfish basketball and sacrifice and win? So you pick it."
"My mission is not a one-game thing. We have to do multiple things in order to win. We got to share the ball. We got to play defense. We got to sacrifice in order to ultimately win. And obviously when you're going through the process, it's not the best part of the process, but I'm looking at the end of the tunnel."
Brian Windhorst of ESPN thinks James is trying to operate a passive-aggressive mission to call out his teammates and teach them what he had learned from his successful four-year stint in South Beach alongside Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh.
Speaking of unselfish teammates, point guard Kyrie Irving has turned into a volume shooter through the first three games with 49 shot attempts. In the game against the Trail Blazers, Irving went a cold 3-for-17 shooting for 9 points along with 5 assists.
According to Bleacher Report analyst Ethan Skolnick, there seems already a clash of different philosophies between a more pass-oriented James and a shot-happy Irving. Moreover, Irving has been playing a lot of one-on-one basketball instead of moving the ball to find an open man.
Will this spark chaos in the Cavs' locker room? It's still too early to tell, but James and Irving are indeed having trouble picking their spots in a very loaded Cavaliers roster.
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