INDEPENDENCE, Ohio _ LeBron James told J.R. Smith he hasn't missed an opening game since he began playing basketball as an eight-year-old.
Based on that conversation, Smith seemed sure Monday that James will be ready Tuesday night when the Cavaliers tip off the season against Kyrie Irving and the Boston Celtics at Quicken Loans Arena.
James saw action in just one preseason game and practiced little after spraining his left ankle on Sept. 27. But James, 32, seemed in good spirits Monday shooting with Jae Crowder, Isaiah Thomas and Jeff Green at Cleveland Clinic Courts and was pushing off the ankle without visible difficulty.
Asked if the Cavs were prepared to face the Celtics without James, Smith said, "Oh, he's going to go. He's going to go, trust me on that. I don't care what he's got to do, he's going to play."
Asked if it was the presence of ex-Cav Irving or opening night, Smith said, "Just because he loves the game. It's different, obviously preseason and regular season. We were talking about it, since he was eight years old and started playing, he never missed the first game. I'm preparing [for] him to play."
Cavs coach Tyronn Lue said he didn't know if James would see action, but said the Cavs did very little in practice, basically a walkthrough and shooting and James participated in all. Lue said the Cavs did not run the court or take contact during the session.
"You know I never hide stuff from you guys. I really don't know," Lue said of James' status. "I mean, just depends on how he feels after today."
Lue said he was preparing for James to play. But if he can't, Lue said Smith will start in his place.
The Cavs were already going to have issues integrating eight new players and the timeline for them to develop chemistry may have been pushed back by James' absence in preseason. The starting unit includes three newcomers _ Dwyane Wade, Derrick Rose and Crowder _ or four if you include Kevin Love moving from power forward to center, sending Tristan Thompson to the second unit.
"He demands the ball, whenever he gets the ball it's just all us trying to find ways in the game to play around him," Rose said of James. "We're all great players, so that should be quite easy. You've got to learn time management, knowing guys' tendencies and all that pretty quick. But we know whenever he's on the floor, you've got to adjust to him."
Rose wasn't sure what would be a reasonable expectation for the Cavs to come together.
"It's just going to take time. We haven't played with LeBron in I don't know how long," Rose said. "It's going to be a process for everybody to learn their roles, get used to playing with one another, learn everybody's tendencies and go out there and play their game and not think while they're out there _ react. Coach Lue has been doing a great job of making sure that he's putting guys in the right position, so it's up to us to execute."
During a taping of a "Road Trippin'?" podcast Saturday in Westlake, Channing Frye cautioned fans to temper their expectations in the first month.
"This is the greatest, smartest team I've ever been on," Frye said on the podcast. "I know where everybody's going to get to by December, January, February. If everybody just takes a little sacrifice, if everybody breaks that bread to each other, we're going to be nasty.
"For the fans, just embrace it. It's not going to be pretty, especially at the beginning, because we have so many guys trying to figure out how much to do, how little to do. You have guys who have been doing something for 10, 12, 14 years. Now they're playing with another MVP candidate, another MVP candidate, three other All-Stars. That's not normal. Just embrace us, roll with us. It's going to be amazing. It's going to be something for the history books."
