5 worst landing spots for Kyrie Irving
Kyrie Irving has requested a trade from the Cleveland Cavaliers and may not have much say in where he winds up. Here are five potential landing spots that might not work out well for Kyrie.
The Cleveland Cavaliers have had an extremely poor offseason — especially for a team that was just in the NBA Finals. Their owner, Dan Gilbert, got frugal with GM David Griffin and let him go. Gilbert courted Chauncey Billups as the heir apparent, but wasn’t willing to pay a salary comparable to other league GMs and Billups walked. With no backup plan in place around the time of the NBA Draft and free agency, the Cavaliers weren’t able to do much.
A trade for Paul George and Jimmy Butler fell through. They signed Jose Calderon on the second day of free agency and then added Jeff Green and Derrick Rose. A month later, Gilbert finally named Koby Altman as the GM, but throughout this time something had been brewing in the background.
Kyrie Irving was originally signed to a five-year contract back in 2014 with the hopes of becoming the face of the franchise. Eleven days later, LeBron James came back home and Irving became Robin to LeBron’s Batman. Even after they won the NBA Championship in 2016, Irving reportedly considering requesting a trade out of Cleveland, but Griffin was able to dissuade the Cavaliers’ star from making a mistake.
With unstable leadership at the top and LeBron’s uncertain future after 2018, Irving has decided to take matters into his own hands and reportedly requested a trade in a meeting with the Cavs’ leadership group in early July. While many questioned why Irving would want to leave a yearly ticket to the NBA Finals and the best player of our generation, the Cavs’ point guard was looking to be “the man” on another squad.
Irving looks to prove that he can truly lead a team to an NBA Championship as the Alpha, let’s take a look at five possible trade destinations where the former Duke star would likely find the going pretty darn tough.
5. Los Angeles Clippers
Although the Clippers weren’t on Irving’s list of teams that he wants to go to, Los Angeles could definitely use a star point guard in wake of CP3’s exodus to Houston.
Doc Rivers may have added Milos Teodosic and Patrick Beverley but neither of those players have the resume that Irving possesses. So why would it be terrible for Irving to go there?
Although the 25-year old has matured in his six seasons in the NBA, a lot the inherent flaws in his game were hidden in these past three years with LeBron James. Irving is a score-first point guard, who took 19.7 shots per game this year on a team loaded with stars. His career-high in assists was 6.1 per game, which came the year before LeBron and Kevin Love arrived.
The Clippers have Blake Griffin, DeAndre Jordan and added Danilo Gallinari this offseason. Griffin and Gallinari are ball-dominant players that don’t necessarily play well in space. While the latter might spread the floor better for Irving, Griffin would probably clog up the lane.
The issue between Griffin and Paul was that they could never balance the ball-handling duties, so how would it work between Irving and Griffin? The Cavs’ point guard has never been a great distributor either, so Jordan may not necessarily get the easy lob dunks that he was getting from Paul.
Defensively, it would be a mess, with liabilities up and down the lineup. Irving may revert back to his pre-LeBron playing style of “dribble, dribble, dribble” and fire away tough, crazy-looking shots. While that may sell seats for Steve Ballmer and the Clippers, in the Western Conference, it probably won’t help them advance in the NBA Playoffs.