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Former NBA point guard Mario Chalmers won two NBA championships while playing alongside star forward LeBron James, but the two of them have an interesting relationship.
During an appearance on The OGs Show, Presented by Playmaker HQ, Chalmers was asked about the current status of his relationship with James, and he said he believes there isn’t beef between the two of them:
“I don’t know. I honestly don’t know. I mean I shoot him a text here and there. Say what’s up, congratulations and all that. Sometimes he texts back, sometimes he don’t… I don’t think there’s beef between us. I still got a lot of love for LeBron. He helped me get my championship. That’s one of my favorite teammates. I ain’t got no beef. I don’t have no disrespect to him. Nothing. There’s some other people that I don’t like out there but that’s a whole different story, but Bron ain’t one of them.”
Chalmers was frequently on the receiving end of some contentious moments from James and Hall of Famers Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh during their time together in Miami. Having the “little brother” role on a team stacked with superstars didn’t phase Chalmers, as it pushed him to be a better player.
However, his comments about James from last year when he declared that “nobody fears” the NBA’s all-time leading scorer raised some eyebrows and led many to question whether there was tension between them.
Chalmers clarified his statements while speaking on The OGs Show, saying that he was highlighting how differently teams game-planned against James during his prime years compared to now:
“When I said it right. I was basically saying that the players that we went against didn’t fear, LeBron. The Danny Grangers, the Luol Dengs, the Jimmy Butlers, the people that we were seeing in the playoffs, they didn’t fear Bron because the media was killing him the year he came to Miami. All they was talking about was ‘Oh he can’t win, he can’t do this, he can’t do that.’
“… So during the workouts, I hear conversations, I hear him saying, ‘People don’t think I could do this. Okay, let me work on this.’ … So when we come to that next year and everybody’s like, make Bron shoot, make bro do this, you can’t make Bron do nothing. … So now he’s attacking differently. So your mindset is going against that. It’s like, oh, I know what he can’t do because the media has been saying X, Y, Z, but you haven’t been in the gym seeing what he’s working on. Now that he’s going and he’s got 24 [points] with 20 in the paint, you like, damn, what does he do now? Now that fear comes as like, I don’t know how to stop. I don’t know what to do now. That’s what I was basically saying…”
Whatever the case may be, James and Chalmers enjoyed a ton of success together, so that likely would be enough to trump any personal differences between them.
