The Cleveland Cavaliers are sitting in first place in the Eastern Conference with a record of 44-17, three games ahead of the Toronto Raptors for the top seed in the East. The road to the NBA Finals in the East once again appears to go through LeBron James and whatever team he plays for, but should there be a cause for any concern over LeBron’s recent Twitter habits? Or is LeBron just taking to Twitter to clear his mind?
James looked to take a shot at teammate Kyrie Irving with a handful of veiled shots in 140 characters or less on Sunday.
Not to be outdone, Irving also fired off this cryptic tweet Monday morning…
Maybe there’s nothing to it. Maybe everything is cool inside the Cleveland locker room. Or, maybe these are signs of friction for the Cavaliers? The truth is, we don’t really know one way or the other how serious this subtweeting game is in Cleveland, so we have no clue how much it jeopardizes the team moving forward. What we do know is James has developed quite the track record for taking veiled shots at others, including teammates, on Twitter. Last year we were all witnesses to LeBron taking cracks at someone presumed to be Kevin Love, who apparently was struggling to fit in with his new team.
LeBron’s latest Twitter episodes have come at a time when Irving is the subject of rumors of being unhappy in Cleveland. Keep in mind Irving was destined to be Cleveland’s next big star, but LeBron reclaimed the spotlight in Cleveland with his return to his roots after a run in Miami. Some friction there had to be expected, but James helped carry the Cavs to the NBA Finals last season and put up an MVP performance despite losing to the Golden State Warriors.
A subtweet can be harmful to a team if it allows it to be harmful. If issues are being sorted out behind the doors to the locker room, then these tweets are just meaningless fluff that will be overanalyzed by the likes of sports bloggers (guilty as charged). However, at some point these tweets will be brought up by the members of the media following the team during the season. Again, if the issues are handled out of the public eye, then this is a non-issue in the public light and is merely for sport by the players at the expense of the media. If there is no communication offline though, then this becomes a growing problem around the team as nobody is taking a leadership role and allowing this to fester and grow out of control like a mogwai that is fed after midnite.
Because LeBron has such a powerful influence on Twitter, every time he pushes anything through on his profile, it is going to be broken down every which way possible as we attempt to figure out the meaning of every word in any given tweet. Such is the world in which we live. Maybe LeBron has some unresolved issues that linger from an in-season coaching change. Maybe he is looking for new ways to fire up his teammates. Maybe he’s just trolling us all and he’s the only one in on the joke. Maybe Irving’s in on it too.
We just do not know, so until we do, we will continue to search for the hidden meaning in everything LeBron James tweets.