Dwyane Wade is not accustomed to losing, and he let his Bulls teammates have it after Wednesday night’s 119-114 loss to the Hawks.
“I don’t know if they care enough, so I can’t say it is. I wish I could say that everyone in here is going to go home and not eat tonight. I can’t say that. I wish I could, but I don’t know that they care enough,” Wade said, via ESPN.com. “Games are supposed to hurt. You’re not supposed to sleep, you’re not supposed to want to talk to anybody.
“These games are supposed to hurt. I don’t know if that is in guys in this locker room. Hopefully they can prove me wrong, but I will challenge them to see if losses like this hurt. We can play bad, we can miss shots, but we’re having too many of these lapses. We’re having too many of these losses. This just can’t be acceptable if you want to do anything besides have an NBA jersey on and make some money. That’s all we’re doing right now.”
Tyronn Lue is actually the fourth coach who Irving has been under since 2010. Before Lue, Byron Scott, Mike Brown and David Blatt all coached the team in relative short succession.
In just the past month, the Cavaliers lost the NBA title and Griffin “parted ways” with the team. Now Cleveland has promoted Koby Altman, who was an assistant under Griffin, to general manager.
As to whether there is any tension between James and Irving, Jefferson said that couldn’t be further from the case.
“I think Kyrie knows how important he is to our team,” Jefferson said. “LeBron knows how important he is. He has been on this podcast. They have been on this podcast together multiple times together where ‘Bron was like, ‘Dude, this is my guy, I need him. He is so important to me, my kids love him.’
“And again, just like any family there are ups and downs, there are moments that you hate them, moments that you love them, and then you just kind of keep it moving.”