James is yet to secure the EuroLeague trophy, and the 10-season veteran admits that getting his hands on it would mean a lot to him.
"Winning the EuroLeague would be big for me," James comments. " I would love it. And just, you know, give me a little bit more stuff to talk to people on Twitter [about], basically."
Monaco has created plenty of noise since its arrival in the EuroLeague in the 2021-22 season, but James believes that the club will continue to go from strength to strength in the coming years.
"I think they're taking steps," he explains. "I think it's hard to take leaps and bounds. And I think that sometimes, as players, we want an organization to grow leaps and bounds in three days, but I think it's unreasonable to ask for that. I think they're taking steps every year; they do two or three things to improve every year and then keep it going. I think they're gonna keep doing that for the rest of their existence."
In fact, expectation levels have changed since James first landed at Monaco early in the 2021-22 campaign, yet he is a fan of the way in which teams bring their A-game when the principality side comes to town.
"Now, it's like people actually have us going to the Final Four, have us winning games, have us being the favorite in a certain number of games," the current EuroLeague scoring leader says. "So it's kind of like, at first I was hunting everybody and now I'm kind of the hunted again, which is fun."
When James first entered the EuroLeague back in the 2014-15 campaign with Baskonia Vitoria-Gasteiz, he was more of a role player. Nine years on, he is a strong candidate each year to become the EuroLeague MVP, about the only award he has yet to win. But it was a gradual process to get to this level.
"I wasn't a superstar right away," James notes. "I learned how to be a role player and got better and became a star."
Stay tuned for future episodes of A Quarter with Kyle Hines. You can listen to the podcast on Apple, Spotify, Audiboom and PodFollow.