Alonzo Mourning Talks LeBron Leaving Miami For Cleveland, Says Kevin Love “Outta There”
The Miami Heat organization took perhaps it’s biggest all-time blow when LeBron James opted to leave and return home to the Cleveland Cavaliers last July. Pat Riley recently expressed his more candid thoughts and reflections on what transpired last summer. Hall of Famer and Heat mogul Alonzo Mourning spoke with SLAM Magazine in a recent interview where he had this to say about LeBron’s decision:
SLAM: One of the really impressive things about the Miami Heat is how well the franchise takes care of its own. If you look at the moves the team’s made over the past half decade, whether it’s sticking with Coach Spoelstra when things were tough in the beginning, making sure to bring back DWade last summer, or even giving Michael Beasley another shot, Pat Riley shows so much love to guys who came up within the organization.
AM: That’s a Pat Riley thing. I think that’s the only way to do it, it really is. I think if you’re gonna be a consistent organization, you’ve gotta take care of your own people. You do. Every year, you can’t have turnover. First of all, Spo knows the culture—it’s just a matter of getting the guys to come in and buy into it. We had a great team for four years straight, and the reason why we had a great team was not just because we had the best player on the planet, it’s because we had the best team that bought into a culture. Everybody bought into this culture. After going to the Finals four years like that, I find it very difficult for individuals like we had to stop buying into the culture that got you four straight NBA Finals appearances. How do you stop buying into that? If you got there four years in a row, why not get back there four more times? And then four more times? Why not get back there 10 years in a row? It’s doable. And Pat Riley wasn’t gonna stop bringing pieces in to complement, you know? So why walk away from a dynasty?
SLAM: You gotta ask LeBron.
AM: [Laughs] Yeah. That’s the question. Why walk away from a dynasty when you have to go somewhere and rebuild, basically? Then you’ve got Kevin Love, who’s not happy at all. He’s outta there.
SLAM: It’s just different priorities, right? It’s the mindset that the NBA Championship isn’t everything, that there’s more to it than that.
AM: Evidently. It had to be. It’s very difficult to even think about walking away from something like that. How do you walk away?
Obviously, Mourning is speaking from a position of extreme bias. He has full loyalty to the Miami Heat franchise and Pat Riley. During that point in time, it wasn’t too hard to answer the question of why would LeBron walk away from that Miami team. Maybe, just maybe things would have taken a different turn had last year’s Finals not turned out so brutal against the San Antonio Spurs.
Despite LeBron promising an absurd multitude of championships in Miami, he did what he went there to do. Mourning and others probably had great confidence that the Heat could regroup for another Finals run with LeBron, but it wasn’t in the cards. The historic speculation won out and his ability to walk away was enforced by the challenge of winning a title for Cleveland, and being to reinforce his supporting cast.
