Kyrie Irving going to Boston was a universal win

Nathan Bleakley
Aug 24, 2017 · 6 min read

Often in life, we view transactions as zero sum games, where every win has to come from the loss of another. For every gain someone makes from a savvy purchase, there’s someone who we think has sold it for too little, or conversely when someone has bought something but has clearly overpaid through the nose to get it. For every canny person who’s held their Bitcoins since 2012 to their now over AUD$5000 value, there’s a poor soul who used 50 of them to buy sneakers back when they were barely worth a dollar each.

Movement of team sport athletes between organisations are regularly viewed through this lens. Professional and amateur analysts alike are quick to pre-emptively call the winners and losers of the deal, particularly in the NBA where the price of trades is measured in players and draft picks, rather than a cash fee like European Football. The acquisition of Paul George this offseason was considered a ‘bargain’ for the Oklahoma City Thunder because they acquired a four time All Star for an average player on an exorbitant contract (Victor Oladipo) and a rookie who had little impact in his first season (Domantas Sabonis). Jimmy Butler was sent to the Timberwolves for a swap of middle-first round picks, Zach Lavine (out with an ACL injury until possibly February) and Kris Dunn (the worst shooting rookie of his class) and the Wolves were said to have “robbed” the Bulls of their star shooting guard. All this before any of the players have played a minute for their new team.

Kyrie Irving engineering a move away from Cleveland with a public trade request, apparently willing to undermine the organisation in any way necessary to get his way, put the team in a position like in these past trades to get back cents on the dollar and “lose” the trade. Once the NBA know a player is actively attempting to leave their team, that team loses a massive amount of negotiating leverage to get back a decent return, like when cunning buyers scout garage sales to buy items for far less than their value from owners who simply want those items gone.

Kyrie was reportedly desperate to leave, with theories ranging from his discontent at being number two, both in decision-making authority on the court and in the team’s pecking order, to Lebron James or that the blunders of the Cavaliers organisation, from firing established GM David Griffin or owner Dan Gilbert’s erratic leadership, made him feel he needed to look for a more stable situation. Irving has been rumoured to be keen to get away from Cleveland in the past, in 2014 before his first contract extension, but some might question that after 3 years straight playing in the NBA Finals, one of which got him a championship ring, why would you want to leave that potential for success on the table? Nevertheless, the Cavs saw, on Tuesday, an offer they couldn’t refuse and sent Irving to the Boston Celtics for a package including two-time All Star Isaiah Thomas, Jae Crowder, Ante Zizic and the Brooklyn Nets’ 2018 1st round pick.

Let’s start with the Cavs here, because given Irving’s desperation to leave and the recent returns that teams have gotten back recently for their want-away All Stars, they look like they have done extremely well here. Having Lebron James means your team will be competing for titles, but given he has yet to rule out whispers of moving to Los Angeles next season, Cleveland has the unenviable task of building a team for the present as well as a post-Lebron future. This move caters to that schizophrenic timeline perfectly.

Getting Isaiah Thomas, on the final year of his below-market contract, is clearly the centrepiece of the Cavaliers’ return. A player that shares many of Kyrie’s strengths (off the ball movement, efficient shooting, elite ball handling, a huge threat around the basket) and weaknesses (horrendous defending, inconsistency), Thomas should replace the production of Irving in the upcoming season seamlessly. The past few seasons have seen the 5”9’ point guard go from streaky scorer to borderline All Star to now a bona fide MVP candidate, dropping 30 points a game in 2016–17, and displays a level of determination and “killer instinct” that will help Cleveland continue to compete at a high level. It will be interesting to see how he performs with somebody else, Lebron, as the focal point of the offence, given one of the key reasons for his terrific 2016–17 season was his ability to be efficient with an unusually high usage rate.

Jae Crowder represents icing on the cake; a nice player on a cheap contract who can contribute 20 to 25 good minutes in a rotation, with his defence being his best quality. Cleveland ultimately plans to face the Golden State Warriors again in next year’s Finals, and could have certainly used more above-average perimeter defenders this year when Kevin Durant and Stephen Curry tore them apart. If Crowder can replicate the defensive high points of his Boston stint, the Cavaliers will be much better equipped in next year’s playoffs. The Brooklyn pick they acquired could also land in the top three and give the Cavs either a young stud to develop in a situation after Lebron James leaves or a brilliant blue chip for future trade negotiations, should their star player decide to stay. In many ways, it looks like the Celtics paid a king’s ransom for Kyrie Irving.

Despite that, there is plenty to like from the Boston perspective as well. Celtics GM, Danny Ainge, is often criticised for passing on trades that might secure his team a better chance to compete in the present, such as moves that would relatively overpay for players like Paul George, Demarcus Cousins and Jimmy Butler. Having made that trade now to get an All Star in Irving, he is receiving criticism he’s given up too much. On closer inspection, I feel like it’s actually a mutually beneficial package for both teams. Isaiah Thomas, despite how enamoured the Boston fan base was with him, is 3 years older and 6 inches shorter (!) than Kyrie, with a massive contract extension looming that might have left the Celtics paying him 30+ million US dollars a year well into his early 30s. Both players have had injury issues in the past, and the Celtics were reportedly concerned about Thomas’ health when it came to this trade. Kyrie is an arguably better, younger, taller version of Isaiah under contract for a longer period of time, making that part of the math simple from the Celtics perspective.

Finally, Boston’s much coveted Brooklyn pick in this deal, a sticking point that Boston has declined to deal in a number of failed negotiations, seems to be the part many think the Celtics shouldn’t have given up. While it could certainly land high in the draft as previously mentioned, Brooklyn looks as good as it has in several seasons, albeit that bar is exceptionally low, with D’Angelo Russell, Allen Crabbe and several young rookies looking to finally give that team direction. More crucially, several teams project to lose significantly more games than last season, with Indiana, Chicago, Atlanta, Sacramento and Suns all looking like they might compete with the Nets in the NBA’s “Annual race to lose a tonne of games and get a good lottery pick.” A key difference too is that the Nets don’t have their own pick, so have no incentive to lose unlike those other teams. That means that the pick could land anywhere from first to maybe eighth or ninth, with that uncertainty making the pick’s value hard to assess right now.

Often it can take several seasons to know the true consequences of a trade for those on either side of the deal. The interesting and unique wrinkle here is such a dramatic personnel change happened between two teams who competed at such a high level last season, facing each other in the Eastern Conference Finals just gone. It’ll be tempting to point to which team makes the Finals next year as a barometer for success on both sides, but it also looks like everyone comes away from this deal with something to be happy with.

The Cavaliers swap a player itching to leave for a better package than they reasonably could have expected, giving them talent to compete for a title in the season to come and assets to build with in those that come after. The Celtics got their star player to pair with Gordon Hayward and the raised team potential that comes with such an excellent playoff performer, as Irving is. Kyrie gets his move away from Cleveland while Lebron reasserts his authority there. Best of all, us NBA fans that love the machinations and excitement the offseason brings with the draft, free agency and trades galore, get the most interesting and most impactful trade in recent memory.

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