LeBron James Called Kyrie Irving 'Soft' After Injury Struggles During 2015 Playoffs

The LeBron James–Kyrie Irving fallout is said to have begun ahead of the 2015 NBA Finals with the former said to have called his teammate "soft" following his struggles with a knee injury during the playoffs.

The current Boston Celtics point guard spent three seasons with James at the Cleveland Cavaliers between 2014 and 2017 during which they won three Eastern Conference titles and one NBA championship, before the former requested for a trade.

Irving struggled with a knee injury during the 2014-2015 season playoffs and completely missed two games of the Eastern Conference Finals against the Atlanta Hawks. He played through injury during their wins over the Boston Celtics and the Chicago Bulls.

According to Cleveland.com’s Joe Vardon, the point guard’s injury struggles did not sit well with James and his team. They were supposedly questioning his toughness and labeling him “soft” for his inability to play through the pain.

“This annoyed LeBron and LeBron’s people to no end. They were calling him soft and questioning his toughness, and LeBron was doing it in comments to the media,” Vardon was quoted as saying on Yahoo Sports.

Irving’s knee struggles during the playoffs eventually culminated in the point guard breaking his kneecap during Game 1 of the 2015 NBA Finals against the Golden State Warriors, which ended up him being sidelined for months. Despite the supposed fallout, he partnered James at the Cavaliers for two more seasons before requesting a trade and joining the Celtics prior to the start of the 2017-18 season.

It came as a shock during the 2017 off-season when Irving requested a trade despite having made the finals with the Cavaliers for three straight seasons. It was clear that there was an underlying tension between the two star players of the Cavaliers, but according to Vardon, despite James being against the trade, he did not “mend fences” with Irving, who was keen to forge his own path away from the shadow of arguably the greatest player in NBA history.

“Let’s be honest: LeBron didn’t do anything, until they were going to trade him, to try to keep him here. He didn’t try to talk to him. He didn’t try to mend the fences. It wasn’t until they said, ‘LeBron, we’re giving him to Boston’ is when he said, ‘No, no don’t do that’,” Vardon said. “When it came out, there was a month – a whole month – before anybody had any idea that the trade was going to be to Boston. LeBron didn’t do anything. There was no love lost between them.”

Irving was an immediate success in Boston as he played a key role in helping the team finish second in the Eastern Conference in 2018 before his season was cut short with another knee injury.