LeBron James and Tristan Thompson engaged in a yelling match on the floor in the second overtime of the Cavaliers’ 135-130 win against the Indiana Pacers on Sunday. The dispute started after Thompson allowed Paul George to nail a three-pointer and make it a one-point game again, and you can see the two briefly exchange words.
LeBron James, Tristan Thompson’s in-game screaming match shows a team on edge
Cavaliers have struggled over the past month, but they did get an enormous win on Sunday.
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On the next play, James assisted on a three-pointer to Kevin Love, putting Cleveland back up by four points. Indiana called a timeout, and a heated James hollered at Thompson as the two came back to the huddle.
On the play involving George’s three-pointer, it appeared that Thompson was supposed to — or at least, James thought Thompson was supposed to — either switch onto George, or hedge on the pick to prevent George from getting the easy three-point look. George had been cooking all night in a throwback duel vs. James, and the team clearly knew better than to give him such an easy three-point look. Still, it admittedly wasn’t great defense by James, either — he got caught on a rather simple cross screen by Myles Turner, trying to go through him rather than definitively choosing to go under or over. You can see the play here.
Cleveland won, and after the game, James took the blame for his public spat.
“I’ve got to do a better job of not showing up my teammates while out on the floor,” LeBron James told Fox Sports Ohio after the game. “I had the right intentions in my mind, but I had the wrong intentions come out of my mouth. So I take full responsibility for that, as the leader of this team. So I gotta be a lot better about that, keep that in-house, in the locker room, and when we’re watching film.”
After the game, James expanded on his comments to reporters in the locker room.
“I was a little bit too demonstrative at that point in the game,” James told reporters. “He worked hard for our team, he’s a big-time player ... but the way it came out was — it didn’t look good on TV.”
Thompson, likewise, didn’t appear to hold any sort of grudge.
“We’re family. Little miscommunication in the huddle,” Thompson said. “Move forward. Move forward. We’re family. Got each other’s back always. Move forward. Not going to get into (the reasons), just miscommunication, like I said. Move forward. It is what it is. Got the win.”
It was an enormous win for Cleveland, as the team remains half a game back of the Boston Celtics for the No. 1 seed in the East and controls their own destiny, since they are tied in the loss column. Boston and Cleveland also have an enormous head-to-head matchup coming on Wednesday, with the winner being heavily favored to take the top seed. (Cleveland currently leads the season series 2-1.)
But James’ frustrations also show how Cleveland has stunk lately, losing 10-of-16 games in March, and it has mostly happened because the Cavaliers are being destroyed whenever he’s not on the floor. That wasn’t the case on Sunday, with James still played a behemoth share of minutes, clocking in at 52 minutes in the two overtime game, by far the most on either side.
The Cavaliers seem to be saying they don’t care about the No. 1 seed, but it doesn’t necessarily appear that way in moments like this.
Everyone who has consumed sports in the past year know the Cavaliers won last year’s championship after falling down 3-1. They’ve struggled during the middle of a season the last two years, only to recover and regroup by the playoffs, where they rolled through everyone. Clearly, the team is on edge right now, and even with the win, they’ve still lost four of their last seven games.
Still, with this team more than any other, you don’t necessarily expect it to stay that way.
