The NBA Finals gets underway Thursday at 9 p.m. EST. With Round 4 of Cavs-Warriors on the horizon, ESPN sent NBA reporter Rachel Nichols—one of the best in the game—to sit down with LeBron James.
With Nichols asking strong questions and LeBron answering honestly, it's a fascinating interview. You can watch the whole thing below.
At the 1:05 mark, Nichols asked LeBron whether he ever sized up the odds stacked against the Cavs and allowed himself to think, I'm not going to make it to the Finals this year. LeBron responded by saying that he feels the odds have been stacked against Cleveland for almost a year now—since the team traded away Kyrie Irving.
"The odds have not been with us all season, even if you start back to the summertime when I felt it was bad for our franchise to trade away our superstar point guard," King James said. "Obviously I wasn't part of the communication and know exactly what was going on between the two sides, but I felt it was just bad timing for our team to get rid of our point guard in Kyrie Irving. So I felt like the odds was against us from the summer."
LeBron went on to recap the ups and downs of this season and said he didn't really have a championship on his mind.
"I can't sit here right now and say that the Finals were a part of my thinking, it was not," he said.
LeBron would love to say that he was thinking in January the Cavs would make the Finals—but that would be a lie. LeBron said he's aware Vegas doesn't give the Cavs good odds in the Finals, but his team has been resilient all postseason. He didn't seem all that bothered by the tall task.
At the 4:08 mark, Nichols reverted to the Irving trade and mentioned that LBJ made a phone call to attempt to stop the trade from happening. LeBron confirmed her statement. She also mentioned that ownership parted ways with General Manager David Griffin—another move LeBron did not want to happen.
With those moves in mind, Nichols asked how ownership will factor into LeBron's free-agency decision, and he gave an interesting response. Smiling, LeBron answered, "umm...we gonna see."
Catch Game 1 on ABC.
