Shaquille O’Neal reveals Mike Brown failed to control LeBron James at Cleveland Cavaliers – NBA News
Recently retired NBA legend Shaquille O’Neal’s new book is out and it is already making some shockwaves.
Shaq played in the NBA for almost two decades and apparently has plenty of stories to tell. One such story has become the centre of attention for Cleveland Cavaliers fans and it is off course about LeBron James, the player, who
according to Shaq was never brought under control by Mike Brown.
Brown coached James for a large part of his career. However, there always existed an air of arrogance about James and he pretty much did whatever he wanted. Brown never really stamped his authority over the super star in the dressing
room, and that became an issue.
Shaquille, who played with James in Cleveland in the 2009-2010 NBA season, gave some insight into the goings on there in his book. According to excerpts taken, Shaq believed that the sheer star power of LeBron made it difficult
for Mike Brown to bring him under any kind of accountability.
“LeBron was a huge star. He was as big as I was in 2000 in L.A. when I was dominating the league. … Our coach, Mike Brown, was a nice guy, but he had to live on edge because nobody was supposed to be confrontational with LeBron.
Nobody wanted him to leave Cleveland, so he was allowed to do whatever he wanted to do.”
James came into the Cleveland Cavaliers team as a teenager and was hailed as the messiah by the whole city. He thrived in all the attention and became arguably the best basketball player on the planet, but he also acquired an arrogance
and superiority complex that caused dissent within the locker room.
Because of his fame and talent, Brown simply wasn’t brave enough to stand up to the “Chosen One” and that sent out a wrong message to the team. Shaquille recalls one such incident in the book where Mike decided to turn a blind
eye to James’ mistakes.
“I remember one day in a film session LeBron didn’t get back on defense after a missed shot. Mike Brown didn’t say anything about it. He went to the next clip and it was Mo Williams not getting back and Mike was saying, “Yo, Mo,
we can’t have that. You’ve got to hustle a little more.”
Because this attitude of James wasn’t nipped in the bud, it continued to cause more and more problems for a team that had NBA World Championship aspirations. It came to a head in the playoff series against the Boston Celtics, when
LeBron basically quit on his team midway through.
It cost Brown his job and James moved to Miami after the season.
Tags: