LeBron James Would Have Willingly Switched Positions If Joe Johnson Signed With The Cavs

While the Golden State Warriors try to achieve the best regular season in NBA history, LeBron James is in a weird place. He wants a championship with the Cleveland Cavaliers so badly, and it’s consuming him to the point where he’s sending abstruse tweets about success and pulling your weight. When the Nets waived Joe Johnson, the Cavaliers made a hard run at him, but the not-good swingman signed with the Miami Heat. LeBron admitted today that he would’ve surrendered his position to Johnson, who despite a hot five games with the Heat remains okay, if he came to Cleveland.

Chris Haynes of Cleveland.com reported that James, who is one of the best players of all time and still in his prime, would have permanently switched to power forward to accommodate Johnson, who is neither of those things. When Haynes talked to James, he confirmed the idea:

“All I care about is winning. That’s all that matters to me,” James confirmed to cleveland.com. “A piece like Joe, you know what it does to your team and if he was concerned about playing time or concerned about starting, then I’ll sacrifice. I’ll sacrifice to get a guy like that to help us try to win a championship.”

[...]

Would James have made such a considerable sacrifice in years prior?

“I don’t know. I don’t know. I can’t answer that, but I know I’ll do it now,” he said to cleveland.com. “I mean, you’re trying to make a push. We’re in March. You get a guy like Joe Johnson, you get a guy that can change your team for the better. I wouldn’t have a problem with [moving to the four].

“If he wanted to come in and start and we wanted to keep J.R. [Smith] in the starting lineup and if Double-T (Tristan Thompson) or Mozzy (Timofey Mozgov) had to come off the bench in order for Joe to start and slide Kev [Love] to the five, I would have done it.”

LeBron also joked about how he’d kidnap his mom if it helped the team win. Well, it’s a joke now. Let’s see how the rest of the Cavaliers’ regular season unfolds.

[ Cleveland.com]

Photo: AP

Contact the author at [email protected].