Miami Heat forward Giannis Antetokounmpo was asked about the possibility of playing with free agent star LeBron James during an interview with ESPN’s Ohm Youngmisuk that aired Thursday (2:56 mark).<\/p>\n
“If there was a scenario for that to happen, I’d be very, very excited,” Antetokounmpo said. “He’s one of the best players to ever play this game, if not the best. [I’d] be able to learn so much from him. Obviously, brings such a championship experience to the team right from day one. I think he’s still one of the best players in the [game today], if not top 25 [at 41 years old]. You don’t see signs of him slowing down at all. You saw in the playoffs how effective and good he was for the Lakers.<\/p>\n
“But I’m just like everybody else, we don’t have all the information. All the information is in LeBron James’ hand and his family’s hands, and he’s going to make the best decision for him. The history has shown that he’s always made good decisions for his career. And I hope if he thinks that the Miami Heat’s a good decision for him. I would love for him to be here.”<\/p>\n
Some signs are starting to point toward James landing with Miami.<\/p>\n
Earlier this week, ESPN’s Shams Charania reported that there is a “focus” on the Heat, Cleveland Cavaliers and Philadelphia 76ers for James’ landing spot.<\/p>\n
ESPN’s Brian Windhorst also said that Miami “makes sense” to him on his Hoop Collective podcast<\/a> (h\/t Heat Central<\/a>).<\/p>\n “You know I’m from Cleveland you know my ties there. The more I’ve looked at this and the more I’ve had conversations, the more Miami makes sense to me. Now when I hear him thinking about a couple of years, it makes even more sense. I think that’s where he goes and fits. He can go there and have the ball. He also can go there and be protected on defense\u2026I don’t see him playing with Donovan and Harden and being a clean fit. The fit in Miami makes more sense to me. I’ve come to that as I’ve watched this unfold the last 3 weeks and had a bunch of conversations.”<\/p>\n Miami makes sense for a few reasons. For starters, James once played there and found great success in his four seasons, winning four Eastern Conference titles and two championships from 2010-11 to 2013-14. Miami is obviously a draw in itself with the weather, and James, now an avid golfer, can play on his off-days.<\/p>\n On the court, he joins a Heat team with great potential after adding a two-time NBA MVP (and one of the league’s top 10 players, easily) in Antetokounmpo. James will also reunite with his old Heat coach, Erik Spoelstra, and could team well with incumbent Heat star Bam Adebayo.<\/p>\n We’ll see if James ends up in Miami, but understandably, Antetokounmpo would be excited to have him aboard.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Miami Heat forward Giannis Antetokounmpo was asked about the possibility of playing with free agent star LeBron James…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":344245,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[123,125,124],"class_list":["post-344244","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-miami","tag-miami","tag-miami-headlines","tag-miami-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344244","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=344244"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344244\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/344245"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=344244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=344244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=344244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}