Tyronn Lue claimed that the Lakers’ contract offer “insulted” him and that the team “only saw him as a coach for LeBron.”

Tyronn Lue may have felt he had no other options when the Lakers ended their negotiations with him, as their offer gave him the impression that they only wanted him to coach LeBron James and nothing more.

Unexpectedly, on Wednesday night, the Los Angeles Lakers’ contract negotiations with Tyronn Lue to be their next head coach abruptly came to an ugly and public end. As the evening progressed, we have begun to understand why.

Lue was reportedly lowballed by the Lakers with an offer of three years and $18 million, which would have done little to surpass the guaranteed money he still has from the Cleveland Cavaliers—cash that he would have to offset by taking a head coaching position elsewhere. It is also known that the team attempted to convince him to replace Jason Kidd as an assistant coach, but he was not open to the idea for fairly obvious reasons.

However, we may now be aware of the main cause of the collapse of the negotiations with Lue, thanks to Ramona Shelburne of ESPN. The impression the Lakers were giving Lue—that they didn’t think he had any other options and only saw him as a coach for LeBron James—was more important than the yearly salary they were offering him: