So about that whole “LeBron James left the Miami Heat primarily because they wouldn’t can Erik Spoelstra” thing…It might not be true.
Bleacher Report’s David Pick provided transcript of an interview with Heat minority owner Raanan Katz, wherein Katz alleged that LeBron had wanted Pat Riley to get rid of Spoelstra.
Riley denies those claims, per ESPN.com’s Michael Wallace:
If LeBron James ever wanted Erik Spoelstra fired as coach while a member of the Heat, he never expressed that sentiment to team president Pat Riley.
“Not from him to me, ever,” Riley said Thursday of James, who left the Heat two seasons ago in free agency to return to Cleveland. “So a lot of stuff is following him out the door. Whether it’s right or wrong, it’s just the nature of it. But as far as that goes, no, he never, ever walked in and said anything.”
Two thoughts on this.
First, though Riley essentially absolves LeBron of any wrongdoing, he doesn’t specifically make any denials on behalf of James’ entire camp. He is very clear to say “not from him,” leaving open the possibility that LeBron’s camp might have, at some point, indirectly communicated such a desire.
But second, and most important, it doesn’t seem like something of this magnitude would have been kept under wraps in Miami for this long. Why wouldn’t it have leaked over a year ago, when LeBron first left? The Heat have no incentive to cover this up, after all.
As Riley noted in Wallace’s piece, a ton of crap followed him when he left the Los Angeles Lakers and New York Knicks. That happens in this business. Not everything we hear is always true, and this situation is particularly fragile, with these sentiments, taken out of context or not, coming immediately after the Cleveland Cavaliers fired head coach David Blatt.
