Every year NBA players are confidentially asked to vote for the “player you secretly want on your team,” and each year when the results come out, LeBron James is the winner of this award. This shows that players around the league, whether they love or hate King James, all want to have him on their side. But recent news has come out that LeBron’s own teammates are starting to dislike the way he has been playing the game in the Cavs recent skid.
Although LeBron James has been playing terrific basketball in almost every game, his teammates haven’t been performing well at all lately.
And not all this is due to their own lack of production or effort, but according to the players themselves, the team’s leader LeBron “King” James has not been getting them involved the way he should.
Cavaliers frustrated at LeBron hunting assists
LeBron James is averaging a career-high in Assists Per Game this season with 8.8 assists per game, slightly better than his previous best last season, averaging 8.7 dimes a night. But although this statistic usually means a player is doing a great job at sharing the ball and getting his teammates involved to be more successful as a unit, LeBron’s Cavaliers' teammates do not believe the way the King is sharing the ball, is helping the team.
A person very close to the Cleveland Cavaliers organization on a daily basis, Joe Vardon of Cleveland.com came out with a statement regarding what he has been noticing with the Cavs players recently, Vardon said, “Players have grumbled that James has slowed the ball movement, holding onto the ball until he sees an ‘assist’ pass, rather than moving it quickly.”
LeBron James has always been a player who gets a lot of assists and hockey assists, both being very important.
A hockey assist is a pass to assist when a player passes to someone who is put in a position to make an easy pass to another player for a score. Usually, the player who makes the hockey assist made the more important play than the guy who gets the assist. But it’s weird that players have questioned LeBron’s ability to make those assists.
Rather, it seems they believe he is trying to get the assist for himself each time.
Players also frustrated with their coach
Joe Vardon also added more to the statement about LeBron’s lack of sharing the ball properly with his teammates. He claims that the players have been questioning their head coach’s lineups and who he has been giving minutes to.
Joe Vardon of Cleveland.com state, “Players are grumbling about Lue’s lineups, wondering if Thompson should start and if Channing Frye should play more.”
The Cavaliers have won just two of their last 6 games, so Coach Lue’s lineups could certainly be a reason for these struggles, and the Cavaliers players know that. We will just have to wait and see if he listens to his troops, and makes any major changes throughout the rest of the season as Cleveland will try to become more successful heading into the playoff run.
