Recently, some members of the 2016 Cleveland Cavs’ championship team reunited on the golf course, including LeBron James, JR Smith, and Kevin Love, among others. It’s now been ten years since that Cavs squad captured the hearts and minds of the basketball world by rallying from a 3-1 deficit in the NBA Finals to defeat the 73-win Golden State Warriors.
Noticeably absent from the reunion was former Cavs guard Kyrie Irving, who is now a member of the Dallas Mavericks. On an Instagram post of the reunion, one fan noted that it appeared as though Irving had been left out of the reunion.
However, Smith responded to the fan with a different take on the situation.
“Missing none,” Smith wrote in the comment section. “He was invited and ghosted us all. So stop with that bs.”
It was just a year after that 2016 title that Irving ended up requesting a trade, which was fulfilled when the Cavs sent him to the Boston Celtics in exchange for Isaiah Thomas in a move that ended up backfiring severely for both organizations. It’s unclear at this point if there’s any real beef between Irving and his former teammates or if he just happened to miss the reunion.
Meanwhile, the current version of the Cavs made the conference finals for the first time in the post-LeBron James era this season, but it’s hard to feel overly excited about the accomplishment given how uncompetitive they looked when they got there, losing in four games to the eventual NBA champion New York Knicks.
This offseason, the Cavs will have an opportunity to try to resculpt their team on the margins in the hopes of leveling up and giving themselves a real chance at another championship.