Ex-Nets exec says team used to tease David Griffin with trade calls about LeBron: ‘He’d hang up the phone’

For the first three seasons of star forward LeBron James’ second stint with the Cleveland Cavaliers, Cleveland’s general manager was David Griffin. Griffin was appointed interim general manager of the team partway through the 2013-14 campaign, and he later shook the interim label.

During Griffin’s tenure in that role, James was among the most valuable players in the NBA. He was still around the height of his powers and years younger than he is today.

Former Brooklyn Nets executive Bobby Marks recently said that back in the day, the Nets would call Griffin in jest regarding James’ availability, and Griffin would respond by hanging up.

“We used to do that in the Nets office when LeBron was in Cleveland,” Marks said. “And we used to call Griffin, bust his balls and be like — they’d go on like a five-game losing streak — and we’d call and be like, ‘You gonna do anything with LeBron at the deadline?’ And he’d hang up the phone on us.”

Griffin seemingly made the right decision in holding onto James, as Cleveland enjoyed great success for the entirety of the executive’s stint with the team as long as James was in the fold. The Cavaliers reached the NBA Finals in 2015, 2016 and 2017 under Griffin’s leadership and won a title in 2016.

Griffin saw his time as the general manager of the Cavaliers come to a close shortly after Cleveland fell to the Golden State Warriors in five games in the 2017 championship series. Griffin’s contract had expired, and the two sides weren’t able to come to a new agreement.

To this day, James has been never part of a trade in the NBA that wasn’t a sign-and-trade. James was involved in a sign-and-trade back when he agreed to leave the Cavaliers for the Miami Heat in the summer of 2010. But all of the times he’s changed teams throughout his NBA career have come during the offseason.

It doesn’t seem all that likely that James will be in a conventional trade before he retires from the NBA either. At 40 years old, James only has so much time left in the league, and the NBA’s oldest player has helped Los Angeles look like one of the better teams in the West this season.

With the Lakers at 25-18, only four teams in the entire conference have better records than Los Angeles does, and the Lakers are within striking distance of a top-four seed as well. The fourth-place Denver Nuggets are only two games ahead of Los Angeles in the standings and suffered a blowout loss to the Minnesota Timberwolves in their most recent game on Saturday.