Kevin Love Calls Out LeBron James For Past Disrespectfulness

Kevin Love and LeBron James enjoyed a fruitful partnership when both were members of the Cleveland Cavaliers in the mid-2010s.

Although they were often bulldozed by the Golden State Warriors in the NBA Finals, they did manage to win one championship together in 2016.

It wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows for the duo, though. At one point, when Love struggled to become the sort of third option James clearly wanted him to be, James took to social media and posted something of a controversial subtweet where he instructed Love to “stop fitting out, [and] start fitting in.”

This week, Love appeared on Barstool Sports’ ‘Pardon My Take’ and revealed how that made him feel.

“That hurt my feeling,” he admitted.

“I mean, it was like, you do the 23 and me and then you get like, I’m 80 percent, like I was majority that guy. Yeah, it’s like 80 percent Kevin Love, you know, 8 percent Dion Waiters, 3 percent Kyrie Irving. You know, Deli’s in the negative, right? it’s one of those things now, like I look back, I probably did take it personal in the moment, and it was tough for me.”

Still, Love made it a point to adjust his Game accordingly.

“Like, I had to adjust,” he continued.

“That’s what, all I wanted from those guys was to just have the recognition, like, oh, this guy’s sacrificing a lot. And like, his learning curve having to do that is a little bit different.

“And like, considering where I came from to where I am now, like, I need to be, you know, I didn’t have a lot of vets, and we almost had like a big revolving door in Minnesota. I think one year we had 27 different players. And guys that were trying to make their way into the league, and at one point, like Darko Milicic was our highest paid player on the team.

“He’s making like six million, so we had one of the lowest payrolls, a new coach, a new GM, and just guys that didn’t know how to win. So it was very, very tough for me to not have veterans and unders. So I had to go through it. And that was only, I think, 20, 30 games in when that tweet happened.

“So I think he was trying to find ways to get the best out of me, get a rise out of me, but also like, you know, I’m gonna play this to the media so that you come back and this doesn’t happen again. So, you know, there was a lot to that, but since, I mean, Bron’s a brother.”

To be fair, James and Love’s relationship eventually improved so much that some thought he might join the Los Angeles Lakers.

While Love opted to return to the Miami Heat, it wasn’t because of a lack of closeness to James.

Hard times sometimes forge strong bonds – and that appears to be what happened between James and Love.

Anthony Amador

A graduate from the University of Texas, Anthony Amador has been credentialed to cover the Houston Texans, Dallas Cowboys, San Antonio Spurs, Dallas Mavericks and high school Games all over the Lone Star State. Currently, his primary beats are the NBA, MLB, NFL and UFC.