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LeBron James, Who Passed on DeMar DeRozan to Acquire Russell Westbrook, Bows Down Before Bulls Star’s Brilliance: “Draymond Green, We Already Knew!”

Published 02/25/2022, 3:30 PM EST

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USA Today via Reuters

Throwback to the 2016 NBA finals, Cleveland vs. Golden State, LeBron James vs Stephen Curry for the NBA Championship. Both sides, full of stars, full of talent. Another rivalry other than that of James and Curry was LeBron vs Draymond. Another couple of players on top of their game. It was a premise for blockbuster finals and it turned out that way. It went down to the last game even till the last minute and eventually Cleveland Cavaliers were champions.

Another story that broke out among the fans was that of Draymond’s altercation with LeBron James. The third strike forced him to sit out game 5 because of a one-game suspension. It also probably handed him a lifetime of “booing” from the Cavaliers faithful. Although in hindsight, that was the game, the Cavaliers picked up momentum and made history to win the finals from a 1-3 deficit to make it 4-3.

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James and Draymond are both extremely competitive rivals, but it never affected their friendship off the court.

LeBron James and Draymond Green enjoy Bulls victory together

Thursday night saw yet another comprehensive DeMar DeRozan performance. He grabbed 37 points in 37 minutes while playing for the Chicago Bulls. This was enough to hand them a close 112-108 victory against the Atlanta Hawks.

Both LeBron and Draymond watched it together as they praised the DeMar performance, saying they both knew what was coming as in they both expected this performance and grandstand finish from DeRozan. Both of them tagged each other in their respective Instagram stories. 

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LeBron posted the story with, “@MONEY23GREEN WE ALREADY KNEW.” “@DEMAR_DEROZAN A MUTHAF^%+* BEAST.”

Whereas Dray posted a similar video as his story from a different angle of the same television, “Everybody knew @demar_derozan”

Draymond Green Lets Out Repressed Emotions On Stephen Curry And Klay Thompson Invited To Teammate’s Wedding But Not Him

It brings a lot of joy to all the fans to see players from different teams appreciating the quality of other players just because they are also fans of the game themselves, just like the rest of us. And of course, we enjoy all the friendships and rivalries. 

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Westbrook over DeRozan for James

It is a well-known fact now that the Russell Westbrook trade to Los Angeles Lakers primarily took place because James was keen to have Westbrook on the roster. Since then, the off-season trade has not been as successful as they would have wished for. 

USA Today via Reuters

It would be fair to say that DeRozan has been one of the best forwards in the league. Despite being in high praise of the Chicago Bulls in form star following his recent performance, it was James who chose Russell over DeMar when the Lakers had the chance to trade in one of the two. 

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One can only imagine how the season for the Lakers would have looked if they had signed the Chicago Bulls star instead of Russell. For now, we are yet to see how well James and Westbrook perform in the remaining matches as the season is in its closing stages.

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Written by:

Chaitanya Sharma

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Chaitanya is an NBA writer at EssentiallySports. He completed his engineering from SRM University. Having determined an interest in football and basketball, he was inclined towards having a job in the sports industry.
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