Star defensive end Myles Garrett recently requested for the Cleveland Browns to trade him. His request comes in light of the Browns enduring a lost season, as they finished the 2024 campaign with only three victories.
Apparently, before Garrett officially asked the Browns to trade him, he consulted with another legendary Cleveland athlete in LeBron James. James hasn’t played for the Cleveland Cavaliers since the 2017-18 season, but he helped the Cavaliers win their first title in franchise history back in 2016. He also knows what it’s like to leave Cleveland.
“[I asked him] what a transition looked like for him,” Garrett said. “What was his thought process going into it before he left Cleveland? And just making sure I made a logical decision, taking my time, and trying to take away the pressure of doing something like that. I know that area, Cleveland, Northeast Ohio, has been his home. It feels like my home as well.”
Garrett was asked if James was disappointed to hear why he called.
“He was not,” Garrett said. “He had actually been reaching out to me, to talk and get my side of things. He’s been a part of difficult times [at the] start of his first start of his career and being so frustrated with being so close to the pinnacle of his sport. And [he] just wanted to see exactly how I was feeling, where my head was at, and if I need to talk to anyone and if I was ready to consider any kind of move that he was there to communicate with and lead on.”
As mentioned, James knows firsthand what it’s like to move on from a professional sports team based in Cleveland after spending so much time there. He spent the first seven seasons of his NBA career with the Cavaliers before he joined up with Chris Bosh and Dwyane Wade on the Miami Heat in the summer of 2010. He also left the Cavs again when his second stint with them came to an end in 2018.
The Browns are the only NFL team Garrett has played for since he entered the league in the 2017 NFL Draft. Cleveland used the No. 1 overall pick that year on him.
Garrett has been one of the NFL’s premier defensive players for a long time, and he checked that box again in the 2024 season.
Just one season after he captured the NFL Defensive Player of the Year award, he totaled a league-high 22 tackles for loss across 17 starts. Additionally, Garrett accumulated 14 sacks, 47 combined tackles, 40 solo tackles, seven assisted tackles and 28 quarterback hits.
However, the Browns still had one of the more inferior defenses in the NFL. They allowed teams to score a whopping 25.6 points per contest, ranking among the worst in the league.
The 2024 Browns were probably the worst NFL team that Garrett has played for aside from his rookie year. In his first NFL season, the franchise went 0-16.
Nobody knows if what exactly James told Garrett will ever be known to the public, but Garrett’s decision suggests that James might have talked to the 29-year-old about exploring his options outside of Cleveland.
