Updated throughout the day with quick takes from staff.
For some reason, this story by Chris Tomasson of Fanhouse makes me think of a forever-scarred John Lucas tossing and turning in his sleep, reliving the nightmares of his Cavaliers tenure in which he claims he was told to tank games so the team could draft LeBron James. I picture Lucas being haunted every night until he finally had to come clean to get rid of the pain.
Step one was getting the nerve to accept a job back into the NBA, as he did this summer when Clippers coach Mike Dunleavy called looking for an assistant coach. Step two, apparently, is spilling the beans about everything the Cavaliers told him to do in 2002-03, his last year as their coach and the year before James was drafted.
"They trade all our guys away and we go real young, and the goal was to get LeBron and also to sell the team,'' Lucas said in an interview with FanHouse. "I didn't have a chance."
[...]
"The Cleveland Cavaliers situation really beat me up,'' said Lucas, who was suspended by the NBA for the first two games of the 2002-03 season due to illegally bringing in James for a voluntary workout with Cavaliers players in May 2002, late in James' junior year. "I didn't know until you get into the inner loop, after you take the job, what their real mission is. ... So I was really beat up from the Cleveland situation and so it took me this long to be back (in the NBA).''
[...]
"What you can't talk about is, 'We're trying to get LeBron,''' Lucas said of the climate that season. "You can't say that (to the fans).''
I wonder what step three is going to be. Will he simply turn and tackle Ricky Davis, who currently plays for the Clippers and was his malcontent "star" in 2002-03, one day? I hope so, because I'd love to see that.
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