Kyrie Irving's attempt to prove his own superstar merits outside of LeBron James' orbit has failed miserably. He has been a disaster at every stop since Cleveland. He blew the Celtics, who were a conference finals team before him and a finals team after him. He'd say Irving's super-team Brooklyn venture with Kevin Durant and James Harden has fizzled out, but the truth is, it never got off the ground.
Irving played 20 games in his first season in Brooklyn. He took a literal vacation in the middle of his second season. He refused to receive a vaccine in his third season and played 29 games. During that span, the Nets were swept in the first round twice. They won a total of seven playoff games. Like I said, disaster. So now, Irving has reportedly sought and received permission from the Nets to pursue sign-and-trade possibilities. The problem is that only one team is interested in signing and trading for Irving. According to ESPN's Adrian Wojnarowski, that team is the Lakers.
After all the bullshit from him, Kyrie might find his way back to LeBron.
Irving simply returning to the Nets, given his lack of suitors, would be the easiest thing to do, and in fact, Irving reportedly decided to open in the final year of his contract. that he is worth $36.5 million. That doesn't mean the Nets still can't trade him. Irving's threat to sign with the Lakers for the $6 million midlevel exception was exactly that, a threat, but the mechanics of salary matching, perhaps as part of a three-team deal, can still happen.
Just for the sake of conversations, let's say this happens. Let's just say Irving, the guy who was supposedly willing to have season-ending surgery if the Cavaliers didn't agree to his trade request to get away from LeBron, ends up with James in Los Angeles. Are the Lakers, in that scenario, a championship contender? Draymond Green, for example, thinks they would be. With LeBron, if you give someone like Kyrie ... they'll have a chance because of the way Kyrie can score, Green said in a recent interview with Bloomberg. LeBron will just put him in position to do that. Kyrie has not proven to be a great leader. LeBron will put an umbrella over that. If you can do what you're good at, you've got LeBron in the lead.
I agree with Dramond. From a pure basketball standpoint, Irving is perfect next to LeBron. He always was. Those guys were magical together. Irving isn't capable of being the best player, let alone the leader, on a team with honest championship aspirations. However, with LeBron in the lead, Irving's scoring and ability to decrease LeBron's playload overshadow his flaws, or at least they once did, and if Irving decides to go back to playing basketball alone, it stands to reason that be like this again. .
Still, the Lakers would have plenty of other things to figure out in this hypothetical scenario. Perimeter defense is one, which Irving doesn't help. Anthony Davis staying healthy and remembering how to shoot as someone else. Russell Westbrook's elephant remains.
They could compete, Draymond said of the Lakers, but they won't beat us. Once again, I agree with Green. Competing for a championship, which is a pretty vague designation for first place in today's parity-driven landscape, and winning a championship are two different things. Damn, nearly half the league could claim they have a shot at a title next season if things go well, and only a select few would be kidding themselves. The Warriors have reestablished themselves as a top cut, but it's not a dynasty-sized gap. It's arguable that the Warriors, despite their fourth championship in eight years, weren't the best team in the league last season. All the Suns contracted COVID. The Bucks didn't have Khris Middleton.
Then again, nothing goes according to script in the NBA playoffs. Injuries always happen. Often to Chris Paul's teams. The Warriors won. They are the champions. End of story. But plenty of teams rightly believe they're in a position to dethrone Golden State, and the hypothetical Kyrie-LeBron-Davis Lakers, if they were healthy, with Kyrie putting his antics aside and playing basketball, would be one of those teams. Irving is a fantastic player and talent. That has never added up to much without LeBron as part of the equation, but no one can deny the power of those two together. Could they be like this again? For a Lakers team without much in the way of a legitimate avenue for significant improvement, it would certainly be worth a try.
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