Paul Pierce says ‘everybody’ felt like LeBron was leaving Cavs in 2010: ‘It felt good to send him out of Cleveland’

Paul Pierce and the Boston Celtics seemingly had a bit to do with LeBron James’ decision to depart the Cleveland Cavaliers for the Miami Heat in the summer of 2010. The Celtics — led by Pierce along with Rajon Rondo, Ray Allen and Kevin Garnett — were a roadblock for the Cavaliers that the team couldn’t overcome at the end of James’ first stint in Cleveland.

Pierce and the Celtics eliminated James and the Cavaliers from the playoffs twice in three years, including in the second round of the 2010 NBA Playoffs. The Cavaliers were sent home in six games in that 2010 second-round series despite the fact that they were the No. 1 seed in the Eastern Conference. James joined up with Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh in Miami just months later.

Pierce has since admitted that it “felt good to send him out of Cleveland.”

“Everybody felt like this was gonna be LeBron’s last year in Cleveland,” Pierce said. “You could just — the energy just spilled. The energy just felt like this was it. After we beat him a second time, it was like — No. 1 seed, they couldn’t get over the hump, and you just knew something was gonna happen in Cleveland. That’s the energy that you felt in the playoffs and all through that series, and it was just like — it felt good to send him out of Cleveland, though. It did feel good.”

The Cavaliers enjoyed a far more productive 2009-10 regular season than the Celtics did. Cleveland won 61 games, while Boston mustered 11 fewer victories and ended up as the No. 4 seed in the Eastern Conference.

Cleveland also had the best player on either team going into the Cavs-Celtics series in James. James, the league MVP at the time, averaged 26.8 points, 9.3 rebounds, 7.2 assists, 2.2 steals and 1.3 blocks per game in the series against Boston.

But the Celtics used their depth and experience to knock out the top seed in the East. Boston rode its momentum from beating the Cavs into an NBA Finals appearance before falling short against Kobe Bryant and the Los Angeles Lakers in the championship series.

For as much as some Cavaliers fans were hurt about James’ decision to leave the team, it’s hard to argue that he made the wrong career move. After all, he appeared in four consecutive NBA Finals and won a pair of titles starring alongside Wade and Bosh on the Heat. Miami won back-to-back championships in the years 2012 and 2013.

James later returned to the Cavs and led them to a title in 2016. He eventually joined the Lakers, who he won a ring with in 2020.