Although things have a tendency to change in the blink of an eye in this league, if the 2015 NBA Playoffs started Wednesday night, the Miami Heat would be facing LeBron James and the rest of the Cleveland Cavaliers. And it seems that the superstar himself would have no problem with that, at all.
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"“I mean just to go up against a champion, a competitor like himself and that franchise…” said James via Chris Haynes of cleveland.com. “You look at the standings, you see who’s two-seven. If we continue to do well, we’ll probably face the seven seed and we’ll see what happens then. But it will be good for the fans, for sure. And it will be good for me and D-Wade just being two guys that love to compete.”"
Indeed it would be good, even great, for the fans. In fact, it would probably rake in more viewers than a first round matchup between the first and eighth seeds. While James and Wade may have no grudges to hold on to, the same cannot be said for Heat Nation. Or even some of the other guys in the Heat organization.
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Recently, president Pat Riley gave an exclusive interview to Bleacher Report’s Ethan Skolnick, in which he touched upon James’ departure.
"“That was almost shocking to me that the players would allow that to happen…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.”"
History aside, a Miami versus Cleveland first round would entice the crowd for another reason too: the Heat stand 2-1 this season over the Cavaliers. So health concerns and roster changes aside, the former champions have already proven they can hang.
These two will battle it out one more time before the postseason begins, on Thursday night at 8 p.m. ET.
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