J.R. Smith appears to have addressed why Kyrie Irving was absent from a recent Cleveland Cavaliers championship reunion.
Several members of the Cavs team that won the franchise's first and only NBA championship recently linked up in the United Kingdom. Tristan Thompson shared a post on Instagram marking the occasion.
"The group chat finally linked up….," he wrote, captioning a collection of photos that featured himself with LeBron James, Kevin Love, J.R. Smith, Richard Jefferson and Channing Frye.
According to ESPN, the group played golf at the Loch Lomond Golf Club in Scotland, which was chronicled on social media by Jefferson.
The NBA on ESPN Instagram account posted about their reunion, but the comments were littered with questions regarding the whereabouts of Kyrie Irving.
Irving will forever be known in Cavaliers history as the player who knocked down the go-ahead shot in Game 7 that ultimately secured the title and completed their dramatic comeback from a 3-1 deficit against the Golden State Warriors in the 2016 NBA Finals.
In the comments on the post, J.R. Smith appeared to address Irving's absence without mentioning him by name, writing: "Missing none. He was invited and ghosted us all. So stop with that bs."
After winning the championship, Irving played one more season with the Cavaliers before requesting a trade and ending up with the Boston Celtics.
In a 2022 interview with I Am Athlete, Kyrie said he was "looking for something different" when he made the trade request.
"I’m continuously reminded over and over again, 'Yo, you left 'Bron. How could you do that?'" he said. "You got his fanbase, you got my fanbase, and you got team fanbases going at it, 'Yo why couldn’t this work?'"
"And I say this: I asked for a trade because I was looking for something different," he continued. "I was a man of my word when I went to the organization, I sat the higher ups down and said, 'Look, I know y’all have future plans, tell me right now.' They told me their future plans, I said, 'Look, this isn’t for me.'"
