The Cleveland Cavaliers won their first, and to date only, NBA championship in 2016, and quite a few members of that iconic team decided to come together for a reunion on the 10th anniversary. While much of the talk during it was about Kyrie Irving “ghosting” his former Cavaliers teammates, it turns out one member of that team didn’t even get an invite.
Russian Timofey Mozgov was a starter for the Cavaliers for much of that 2015-16 season, and he told Sport Express that he wasn’t informed about the reunion.
“Yes, I saw the video of that party,” Mozgov said. “No one wrote or called me. If I’d been invited, I’d have gladly joined. Of course, I’d have loved to be there too, to drink some wine.”
That is quite sad, but Mozgov doesn’t appear bitter about it. Hopefully, the 39-year-old will be invited to the next one.
Mozgov had been traded to the Cavaliers in January 2015 by the Denver Nuggets, and he’d be their starting center for the rest of the season. They went all the way to the NBA Finals in 2015, but lost to the Golden State Warriors in six games.
Then, in 2015-16, Mozgov would split starting duties with Tristan Thompson in the regular season. He had to settle for the bench role in the playoffs, but the pain from that would have disappeared when they beat the Warriors in the 2016 NBA Finals. The Cavaliers were down 3-1 in the series, but stormed back to win in seven.
It was Irving who hit a memorable clutch three-pointer over Stephen Curry in the final minute of Game 7 to put the Cavaliers up for good. He was the second-best player on that team, which was part of why his absence from the reunion became such a big talking point.
Thompson, LeBron James, Kevin Love, J.R. Smith, Richard Jefferson, and Channing Frye had all flown to the United Kingdom for the reunion. Irving not being with them raised eyebrows, and Smith claimed he had ghosted them.
NBA insider Brandon “Scoop B” Robinson then said Irving hadn’t ghosted his former teammates, and he shared reasons to explain his absence. Smith and Jefferson weren’t interested in hearing any of that, though. Not long after this, Iman Shumpert and Matthew Dellavedova joined their former teammates when the reunion shifted to Saint-Tropez.
With so much chatter around his absence, Irving would eventually break his silence with an Instagram post. Smith then revealed that he had personally reached out to them as well.
Irving would later make it clear there is no bad blood between him and his former Cavaliers teammate. He also added that he would meet them when he returned to the U.S.
Getting back to Mozgov, that 2016 Finals was the last time we saw him with the Cavaliers. He got a four-year, $64 million deal from the Los Angeles Lakers in the offseason and headed out of town.
Mozgov finished his Cavaliers career with averages of 7.9 points, 5.4 rebounds, 0.6 assists, 0.3 steals, and 0.9 blocks per game. While he got that four-year deal, he wouldn’t be in the NBA for that long.
The Lakers traded Mozgov to the Brooklyn Nets in 2017. The Nets shipped him off to the Charlotte Hornets in 2018, and they sent him to the Orlando Magic a day later. The Magic waived Mozgov in 2019, and with that, his NBA career ended after eight seasons. He’d spend the rest of his professional career in Russia and retired in 2022.
