Chauncey Billups nearly signed a deal to become general manager of the Cleveland Cavaliers this summer, until the Cavs reportedly low-balled him.
“It didn’t really surprise me. Obviously, I knew, as they were doing their due diligence on me I was doing the same thing, so obviously I knew so much about the situation that the rest of the world doesn’t know.”
Billups said that while Irving is a “special talent,” “so much of what he’s been able to accomplish on and off the floor has been a beneficiary of having LeBron James.”
Just because Billups isn’t surprised by Irving’s decision doesn’t mean he understands it:
“I just don’t get it, but everybody has their own desires. I mean, he’s won a championship already, maybe he’s saying: ‘you know what? I’ve won a championship, I did this, I did that.’ Maybe he wants to beat Russell Westbrook and go try to win MVP and get all the shots. That’s the only sense I can make of it, and to me, that doesn’t make sense, because all I cared about was winning, not stats or anything.”
Billups said that when he was considering taking the job, it wasn’t the idea of LeBron James leaving next summer that scared him, but the Cavaliers’ lack of assets if James did leave Cleveland.
