The Miami Heat are still clinging to a playoff spot in the Eastern Conference despite some injury woes, but fans and front office members of the team have to be wondering what could have been if LeBron James had not elected to return to the Cleveland Cavaliers as a free agent last offseason.
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Miami executive Pat Riley recently spoke to Bleacher Report about James leaving and how it shocked he and the team were when James made the decision to return to Cleveland. "Obviously, the hit we took with LeBron leaving just crushed us," Riley said.
"That's the most surprising thing for me, is how those..." Riley went on. "Generational teams stay together. The players stay together. They know what they have. They see what they've won. They see that there's going to be a little bit of an adjustment here, and they don't want to leave that. You may never get it again.
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"That was almost shocking to me that the players would allow that to happen. And I'm not just saying LeBron. I mean, the players, themselves, would allow them to get to a state where a guy would want to go home or whatever it is.
"So maybe I'm dealing with a contemporary attitude today of, 'Well, I got four years here, and I think I'll go up there for whatever reason I went.' You know, the whole 'home' thing, I understand that. But what he had here, and what he had developed here, and what he could have developed over the next five or six years here, with the same team, could have been historic. And usually teams from inside..."
"It would be like Magic and Kareem and [James] Worthy, they weren't going to go anywhere," Riley said. "They had come at a time when there were free agents. They weren't going to go. You think Magic was going to leave Kareem? You think Kareem was going to leave Magic? You think Worthy was going to leave either one of those guys, or [Byron] Scott or [Michael] Cooper? No, they knew they had a chance to win every year. And this team had a chance every year. So that was shocking to me that it happened. Now, could we have done more? Could they have done more?"
It sounds like Riley is still a little sore over LeBron's choice.
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