Brian Windhorst and a team of ESPN's Insiders sort out life and the news from in and around the NBA world, including one of the most influential people in this year's playoff push, the must-see games of the league's final regular-season week and why the Chicago Bulls are peaking at the right time.
It takes something truly special for LeBron James to feel warmth for Danny Ainge.
James, the Los Angeles Lakers superstar, and Ainge, the Utah Jazz CEO of basketball operations, are 26 years apart in age and have never played against each other on the court. But, oh, are they rivals.
Ainge, in his heart, will always be a Boston Celtic. James, in his heart, will always dislike the Celtics. It only gets edgier from there.
Ainge once built a team that beat James in the 2008 and 2010 playoffs and helped drive him from the Cleveland Cavaliers. James then beat the Celtics five straight times in the playoffs, including twice in conference finals elimination games in Boston.
James broke up Boston's Big Three by recruiting Ray Allen to the Miami Heat and then by crushing what was left, leading Ainge to trade away Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett. Ainge greased James' second exit out of Cleveland when he traded for Kyrie Irving in 2017.
Ainge was fined $25,000 by the league in 2010 for distracting James' teammates at the free throw line by throwing a towel from his baseline seat during a playoff game. Miami Heat president Pat Riley once told Ainge to "shut the f--- up" when Ainge called James' complaints to referees "embarrassing." Ainge also riled up James when he compared James to Donald Trump on a Boston radio show.
But let's not focus on just the past.
With the Jazz, Ainge -- and team general manager Justin Zanik -- have had an outsized role in the NBA's balance of power. A case could even be made for Ainge being one of the league's most influential people of the 2022-23 season.
And this is where James and Ainge have sprung up new feelings.