Pat Riley may not have stolen cookies right from the hands of LeBron James, but the Miami Heat president did, indeed, take LeBron’s cookies away.
That is the story, at least. Dwyane Wade, who was teammates with James in Miami for four seasons, shared a story earlier this year about how Riley once put a stop to LeBron eating cookies on team flights. Wade was a guest on “The Underground Lounge” when he recalled how LeBron, who is a cookie fanatic, had his cookies taken away by Riley. Wade said that was the first moment he thought “LeBron might not be back” with the Heat.
During a Wednesday appearance on “The Pat McAfee Show,” James confirmed that Riley stopped the four-time NBA champion from downing chocolate chip cookies on company time. The details were a bit different, however. LeBron said the flight crew used to make him chocolate chip cookies because they knew he liked them so much.
Then one day, the cookies were gone.
“I would get on, and they already knew. They’d bring me two cookies and I would get to gambling with the guys and I got my cookies, and we good,” LeBron recalled. “And then one flight I got on and I looked at them and they looked at me and I’m like, that look didn’t look familiar. They were like, ‘No, we’re not allowed to … no more cookies on these flights.’ We all knew where it came from. I looked at D-Wade, D-Wade looked at me. Without even saying it, he was like, ‘F–ing Riles has done it again. Riles strikes again.'”
You can listen to LeBron’s version of the story here.
The reasons that James chose to leave the Heat and return to Cleveland were much, much deeper than Riley banning chocolate chip cookies. If nothing else, the cookie situation shows the level of control Riley likes to have over the organization.
Riley has butted heads with plenty of star players over the years. As far as we can tell, LeBron is the only player he had disagreements with over dessert.
