Kyrie opens up on his exit from Cavs and playing with LeBron: ‘It was my time to move on’

Former Cleveland Cavaliers guard Kyrie Irving spent three seasons of his NBA career playing alongside forward LeBron James — one of the greatest players in the history of the sport — in Cleveland. They made history together, as Irving and James were key to the Cavaliers winning their first championship in franchise history in 2016.

But Irving also admitted that his time playing with James wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows because of the expectations that are inherent with playing alongside a talent of his caliber. Irving explained that it comes with a lot of media attention as well as expectations to be one of the top teams in the NBA.

“When you’re playing with somebody like Bron or somebody that you guys like to compare him to, it’s a different animal,” Irving said during a Twitch stream. “It’s a different journey, you know what I’m saying? You’re automatically expected to be at the top of the charts, the top of the league. Every time you play with Bron it’s going to be a lot of media attention, it’s going to be a lot of back and forth and narratives. It’s going to be a lot of spun narratives; it’s going to be a lot of politics. It’s going to be a lot of s— that a lot of people don’t see in front of the camera. And for me I was just a young person trying to figure it out, you know what I mean? It’s not that I disliked playing with Bron at any time. It was just literally — it was my time to move on.”

Irving requested a trade from the Cavaliers in the summer of 2017 after he spent the opening six seasons of his pro career in Cleveland and helped the team qualify for three consecutive appearances in the NBA Finals. Irving wanted to play in a situation where he could be more of an offensive focal point, and he was dealt to the Boston Celtics ahead of the 2017-18 campaign.

The Celtics gave up guard Isaiah Thomas, forward Jae Crowder, center Ante Zizic and a pair of draft picks for Irving. The Irving experiment unfortunately didn’t pan out at all in Boston. Boston never advanced past the Eastern Conference Finals during his time with the team, and Irving was injured for the entirety of that surprise run in the 2018 NBA Playoffs.

After the Celtics woefully underperformed in the 2018-19 season and saw their season come to an end in the second round of the 2019 NBA Playoffs, Irving departed Boston in free agency for a chance to play alongside forward Kevin Durant on the Brooklyn Nets.

Fast forward years after Irving’s decision to ask out of Cleveland, and he has yet to prove that he can be the best player on a title-contending team. He made the NBA Finals recently in the 2024 NBA Playoffs, but Slovenian guard Luka Doncic spearheaded that Dallas Mavericks team that came just three wins away from the league’s ultimate prize that year.

Whether or not Irving should have asked to get traded all those years ago is up for debate, but hopefully he will be able to add to his ring count before he decides to retire from the NBA.