Report: LeBron And Kyrie Irving Exchanged Words After Loss

The Cavaliers are off to sluggish start, sitting at 1-3 after dropping last night's game to Gordon Hayward and the Jazz. They lost Tuesday's game agains the Blazers by 19 points, and ESPN's Brian Windhorst is reporting that Kyrie Irving and LeBron James got into a "healthy" discussion after that game.

According to Windhorst, the discussion consisted of James expressing concerns over how much Irving has been dominating the ball in the season's early going. Afterwards, Irving apparently left the locker room quickly and did not speak to the media.

This kind of talk happens in NBA locker rooms all the time and James has explicitly talked about taking on a role as a sort of unofficial coach as he moves toward the elder statesman phase of his career, so there isn't much to be made of the exchange itself. It might make you raise an eyebrow at Irving's performance in last night's loss to Utah, though.

In 45 minutes, Irving scored 34 points but didn't dish a single assist. The entire team totaled only six assists. That's not a very good way to play basketball, and it's a little worrying that it happened just a day after LeBron—who definitely leads by example here—talked to Irving about spreading the ball around a little more.

[ ESPN]