Lue answered the phone to talk to Walton, who is set to become James’ sixth head coach, following Paul Silas and Mike Brown in his first stint in Cleveland, Erik Spoelstra in Miami and David Blatt and Lue in the second stint in Cleveland.
The pair spoke briefly and agreed to meet in Las Vegas during the NBA Summer League. The dinner plans involving Lue, Walton and Shaw were earlier reported by the Los Angeles Times. After juggling schedules, the trio settled on breakfast Monday.
“I just want to let him know, the s— that people say and you read, Bron’s not like that,” Lue said. “Like, they make it seem like he’s hard on the coach, he’s hard on [the organization]. He’s nothing like that. That’s the most important thing I want to convey with him: that he’s not like that.
“My biggest thing is the zoo comes from just the outside media. It’s really not coming from within because everybody he deals with — Maverick [Carter], Randy [Mims], all those guys — are professional. So it won’t be no problem from any of those guys, and Bron carries himself the right way. So the biggest part is just having to deal with the media scrutiny. But he’s not like that. I don’t want people thinking Bron’s an a–h— or Bron’s this and that because he’s not.”
Walton has also reached out to Spoelstra to pick his brain about coaching James, sources told ESPN. This is kind of strange, Lue really never coached LeBron, LeBron kind of coached Lue.
