Report: Kyrie Irving told Cavaliers he would not report to training camp

Since the blockbuster deal between the Boston Celtics and Cleveland Cavaliers late Tuesday, details have begun to leak out on what made it possible.

As with any blockbuster deal, details surrounding around it begin to leak out after the fact. Seemingly harmless player demands can be seen as turning points in negotiations. Kyrie Irving telling the Cavaliers he wouldn’t report to camp could be labeled as such.

In ESPN’s Dave McMenamin’s latest piece, Irving told the Cavs he would not report to camp and would rather miss it than start another season with the team. Though it makes sense even at first glance — of course a player who doesn’t want to play for a team would rather leave — peeling back the layers could shed light on the eventual trade with the Celtics, who remain the biggest threat to the Cavaliers’ road back to the NBA Finals.

For one, it shows Irving wasn’t interested in mending fences, as McMenamin said the team hoped could be accomplished when the roster reported for camp. Irving didn’t even want to risk the possibility of it happening. Second, Irving’s holdout not only adds more negativity to an already negative situation, it could plummet his trade value because teams would see the Cavs have no choice. And third, the potential ugly beginning to training camp could have been the reason the door opened up for the Celtics. Though with their amount of assets, they are always a dark horse candidate for trades, it made little sense for the Cavaliers to trade their second-best player to the team they met only a couple months ago in the Eastern Conference Finals. It would only take a situation like Irving’s to facilitate such a deal.

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In the end, this is purely speculation and both teams have cases for their winning the trade, but as the details come out and the pieces come together, we can get a clearer picture of how it went down.