It wasn’t so long ago that I wrote about the Clippers’ active role in the point guard market–how fast things change in a week in the lead-up to the NBA trade deadline. Today the news broke that mercurial star guard Kyrie Irving has requested a trade from the Brooklyn Nets. This latest fallout between Irving and the Nets organization continues long-running disagreements that have consumed the franchise ever since Irving and Kevin Durant joined the team in free agency in 2019, the same year that the Clippers signed Kawhi Leonard and traded for Paul George.
Without retelling in detail a long, ugly, and controversial history that most basketball fans are already familiar with, the current trade demand is based in an inability between the sides to agree to a contract extension. Irving’s ability to appear in NBA games has been impacted by off-court controversies that have ranged from erratic to uninformed to hateful. As a result, the Nets want to include some stipulations on a new contract that would protect them and provide him with a financial incentive to avoid controversy. We don’t know the details of the negotiations, but one can imagine what contract language around morality and availability might sound like. Irving, naturally, wants his money to be guaranteed. Regardless of your feelings towards the entire situation, the dispute here boils down to the same type of tension we see in other negotiations, with the team wanting to protect themselves from downside and the player wanting to guarantee his earnings.
There is, undeniably, a “should the Clippers trade for Kyrie Irving?” debate raging on twitter. At least a half-dozen fanbases are having that debate right now, and the same war is raging inside front offices. We don’t have to fool ourselves into thinking that NBA teams are going to try to stake some moral high ground about not getting a guy because of his vaccination status or antisemitic tweets–professional sports pretty consistently glosses over moral considerations if someone is good enough. But as fans–especially Jewish fans–ask “do I want to root for this guy?” front offices are asking “is this guy gonna show up for us?” Irving has played 143 games in 4 years for the Nets (you know how Kawhi Leonard never plays? He’s at 138 and he tore his ACL) and is a major flight risk, walking away from the Boston Celtics after saying he wanted to re-sign and now threatening to walk away from the Brooklyn Nets. You should probably only trade for him if you’re comfortable giving him a max deal without availability stipulations, which is a scary proposition, because he could ghost you at any time during that deal.
But to be honest, I think the “should the Clippers trade for Kyrie?” debate is a little played out. We get it. He’s an All-Star point guard, and the Clippers are a team that could really use an All-Star point guard. He’s a flight risk and locker room saboteur, and the Clippers are a team that struggles with star availability and internal cohesion. I lean no, but you do you.
It’s probably easier to reach the logical end of the conversation if we ask “should the Nets trade Kyrie to the Clippers?” It’s a no, I think. Brooklyn has essentially two options: reload, and quickly, around 34-year-old MVP contender Kevin Durant, or move on from Durant as well for pennies on the dollar and rebuild. I’m sorry, but any collection of Reggie Jackson, Norman Powell, Luke Kennard, Terance Mann, Marcus Morris, etc. accomplishes neither for the Nets. All of those guys have utility, but none of them give Durant the kind of creative costar that he is going to need for the Nets to be contenders. None of them have the trade value to be flipped for such a star in the next year (which is the problem the Clippers currently have), and none of them are sufficient cornerstones for a rebuild (I know Clippers fans love Luke and Terance but they’re both turning 27 next off-season and are at best fringe starters). The Clippers can also only trade one future first round pick, hurting their offer from both perspectives as they wouldn’t give Brooklyn significant capital to put together a trade package for another star or contribute much to the stockpile of draft picks that the Nets would need to end up with to justify a tear-down.
Other trade partners for Irving make much more sense from one or both perspectives. The Phoenix Suns could work a number of angles involving combinations of Chris Paul, DeAndre Ayton, and a full chest of future draft picks (including potential 3-team options). I imagine that despite his decline, Durant and the Nets would view adding CP3 as an acceptable portion of a win-now return. If Ayton doesn’t interest them, how about a 3-team deal that reroutes Ayton and nets Brooklyn Toronto’s OG Anunoby or Portland’s Anfernee Simons (if they got Simons, they might not want CP3, but we’ll touch on that in a moment)? The Los Angeles Lakers can’t offer Brooklyn help directly, but if they include two unprotected future first round picks, the Nets could move quickly to repackage those picks and replace Irving or at least have them in the war chest if they ultimately trade Durant as well. However, it’s unclear if a Lakers front office that has been conservative with those picks in trade talks up until now would put them both on the table to gamble on Irving. The Dallas Mavericks are also hunting for star talent to pair with Luka Doncic, but a potential deal feels less compelling there; they lack a meaningful costar centerpiece and, given Doncic’s age, have reason to be cautious in conserving their future draft capital for a future swing with lower downside.
And if the Suns, Lakers, and Mavericks all play it safe and the Nets really wind up in a situation where three of the Clippers’ role players and a first is their best option? They should just keep Irving. When Irving and Durant are both healthy, the Nets have been good this year, and they have a chance at winning the 2023 championship–a much better chance at a title than they’ll have trying to retool around Durant with any return they could get from the Clippers. There is the downside that keeping a malcontent Irving could disrupt the locker room, that he could opt to not play, and then ultimately leave for nothing in the summer. But if teams’ skepticism of him has lowered his value so much that the Nets can’t get a better return than what the Clippers can offer, he’s not going to get the no-strings-attached max contract he wants this offseason either. Choosing not to show up to work after the deadline despite the Nets being a good team would only drive that valuation further down. On the other hand, if teams don’t like him enough to make a big trade for him, and therefore don’t like him enough to offer him a big deal this summer… he might be forced by the market to re-engage with Brooklyn on their stipulations. Is he stubborn enough to walk to Orlando just to spite them? Maybe. Is he mercurial enough to reverse course and decide that living in Brooklyn, playing with KD, and winning games is a path worth staying on? Maybe.
So, even tabling the debate about what LAC needs and if Irving is worth the risk, I don’t think the Kyrie-to-LAC thing makes much sense from Brooklyn’s perspective. I do think that it could have some fascinating ramifications on the point guard trade market in general, where the Clippers are known to be one of the most aggressive teams as this deadline approaches. I have mentioned a couple of ideas in recent weeks that warrant revision with this news: first, that I am not sure that the Clippers have a competitive enough trade package to win the Fred VanVleet bidding war as he is the biggest name on the market that teams with assets will be chasing; second, that if the Suns (with far superior trade assets to LAC) won the VanVleet bidding war, that Toronto would have no interest in Chris Paul and the two sides would have to find a win-now team willing to absorb $90M worth of aging hall of fame point guard. Sound like any teams we know?
Irving’s presence on the market–and, in my opinion, the Suns being best-positioned to get him if they want him–changes both of those equations. Assuming the Suns value Irving over VanVleet (this is an obvious on-court preference but could be complicated by teams avoiding off-court risks), the spotlight of the point guard market shifts and the Clippers would have a clearer path, though no guarantee, to a successful offer for VanVleet. The prognosis on potentially scooping Chris Paul out of a multi-team deal if LAC can’t find a deal for VanVleet probably gets a little bit worse, however. One would assume that in most Irving-to-Phoenix scenarios, the Nets would stay in win-now mode and want Paul to be part of a larger return package to keep the team competitive around Durant. There are exceptions, of course–if they can’t find a solution that satisfies Durant and are forced to move him as well, then they’d have little need for a soon-to-be 38-year-old. And if the Nets don’t want Ayton and work a deal where he goes to a third team and a younger star guard comes back to Brooklyn (like Portland’s Anfernee Simons, mentioned above), Chris Paul could be left adrift. Nonetheless, I think it’s most likely that he would join Durant in Brooklyn in the vast majority of potential trade builds.
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