Kyrie Irving’s attempt to prove his own superstar merits outside the orbit of LeBron James has failed miserably. He’s been a disaster at every post-Cleveland stop. He screwed up the Celtics, who were a conference finals team before him and a Finals team after him. I would say Irving’s super-team Brooklyn venture with Kevin Durant and James Harden has nosedived, but the truth is it never really got off the ground.
Irving played 20 games his first season in Brooklyn. He took a literal vacation in the middle of his second season. He refused to get a vaccine shot in his third season and played 29 games. Over that span, the Nets got swept in the first round twice. They won a total of seven playoffs games. Like I said, disaster.
So now Irving, who will become a free agent if he doesn’t opt in to his $36.5 million option for the 2022-23 season by Wednesday, has reportedly sought and received permission from the Nets to pursue sign-and-trade possibilities. Problem is, only one team has any interest in a sign and trade for Irving. Per ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski, that team is the Lakers. After all his nonsense, Kyrie is trying to find his way back to LeBron.
Whether this reunion actually comes to fruition is another story. Reports indicate the Lakers don’t have a trade package in which the Nets are interested. Bleacher Report’s Jake Fisher is reporting that Irving would be willing to scrap the sign-and-trade idea to instead sign with the Lakers as an unrestricted free agent for the $6M taxpayer midlevel exception, with the intention of then signing a longer term deal with the Lakers next summer.
Just for conversation’s sake, let’s say this happens. Let’s say that Irving, the guy who was reportedly willing to have a season-ending surgery if the Cavaliers didn’t grant his trade request to get away from LeBron, is willing to go crawling back for relative peanuts. Are the Lakers, in that scenario, a championship-contending team? Draymond Green, for one, believes so.
“With LeBron, if you give him someone like Kyrie … they’ll have a chance because of the way Kyrie can score the basketball,” Green said in a recent interview with Bloomberg. “LeBron will only 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 have LeBron leading.”
I agree with Draymond. From a pure basketball…
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at CBSSports.com Headlines…