Year later, LeBron hangover is gone
Teammates admit it took a while to adjust, move past departure
BOCA RATON — Candor could have been crushing a year ago. So, instead, there were brave faces, a united front.
That’s what makes this Miami Heat training camp different. A year ago, LeBron James left the building. This year, the Ghost of LeBron James has left the building.
“We definitely started off with a little bit of the LeBron hangover,” Udonis Haslem says of last season’s camp, as he unwinds from a grueling morning workout at Florida Atlantic University.
“I mean, yeah, I think everybody did. It’s hard not to miss that and not feel that void, no matter how much you try to ignore the fact that he’s gone. It affected us.”
To acknowledge as much a year ago would have been to admit offseason defeat.
But it was there at last year’s camp, the void created by James’ July 2014 free-agency defection back to the Cleveland Cavaliers. Unspoken. But real.
“When you play until late June and then you lose one of the best players in the game, you don’t have time to make up for that,” Dwyane Wade, the Heat’s other co-captain, says as he leans against a wall at FAU Arena. “You try to defeat the odds and hope it doesn’t affect you.”
But it did. In so many ways. Ways untold then. Ways told now.
“It’s hard not to miss that and not feel that void, no matter how much you try to ignore the fact that he’s gone,” Haslem says. “It affected us.”
Then the games began. Then came the injuries. Then there simply wasn’t the time or energy to look back.
“Obviously,” Haslem says, “we got that out of our system.” And now, 12 months later? “It’s gone, out of our system,” Haslem says.
Much of the focus last season was on injuries. Danny Granger never
found his legs. Josh McRoberts was lost for the season in December, Chris Bosh in February. Along the way, Wade missed a quarter of the schedule.
“All the injuries we had last year,” Wade says, “it was a snowball effect, you just kept going down and down.”
For a while, it appeared the Heat had it figured out at the start of last season, the offense crisp, fluid during the early weeks. But when it bogged down, that’s when the void was felt. That’s what the happy talk of October couldn’t mask.
“For myself, I became accustomed in my mind to playing a certain way and understanding how it was going to be,” Wade says of his four seasons alongside LeBron. “And then it changed. And it was like, ‘OK, you’re 1A and C.B. was 1A. So your mindset had to change, your game had to change. And it took a while even being comfortable being back into the role of the ball coming to you a lot of possessions. “Yeah, it was different.” Weeks, months, a season passed. Another offseason came, and this time everyone stayed and more was added.
And then, on the eve of camp, there he was again, James back at the field day hosted by Wade for teammates and a certain former teammate.
Because that, too, was an important part of the process, consideration of LeBron only in the present tense, no looking back.
“People think that because a player decided to do something that another player is supposed to hate him for it, you’re never supposed to ever talk again,” Wade says. “But if the organization decides to part with a player then it’s no problem with you having that relationship. I’m glad I don’t live my life caring about those kind of things, of what people think about me to that extent. I really don’t care.
“We understand what each other are as competitors. You would love to beat the other guy. You’re friends, don’t get it twisted. But we’re competitors.”
Former teammate is once and again a target.
“I love him and I wish him all the success, except when he plays against us,” Haslem says.
He pauses, smiles, and adds, “Would I like to ruin his season? Of course. I would gladly do that.”
Twelve months later, not only out of sight, but also out of mind.