NBA Fact or Fiction: Kyrie Irving just became eligible to be traded. Now what?
Each week during the 2023-24 NBA season, we will take a deeper dive into some of the league’s biggest storylines in an attempt to determine whether the trends are based more in fact or fiction moving forward.
[Last week: How to improve the NBA's in-season tournament]
This week's topic: Kyrie Irving trade rumors never can stop
Roughly 80 players, another 20% of the NBA's roster spots, became eligible to be traded Friday. Most everyone who earned a free-agent contract over the summer, save for those who signed after Sept. 15 and a few other exceptions, can be dealt as of the unofficial start to a trade season that runs through Feb. 8.
Most of the names will not excite you, but their salaries can now be packaged in pursuit of more notable players on the market, namely Zach LaVine, Pascal Siakam and (for an exorbitant price) Lauri Markkanen.
Keep in mind, not a single trade was made last December, and there were only two deals in January: the salary dump of a minimum contract and the Los Angeles Lakers' acquisition of Rui Hachimura. It was not until Kyrie Irving requested a trade from the Brooklyn Nets the week of the deadline that the stove got hot.
Funnily enough, Irving is the highest-profile player of the 81 who just became eligible to be traded, along with Russell Westbrook, Khris Middleton, Fred VanVleet and a recently more interesting name, Draymond Green.
Irving might also be the most likely of that group to be traded, if only because his desires drift in the wind. He requested a trade from LeBron James' Cleveland Cavaliers a month removed from a third straight trip to the NBA Finals, seeking leadership of his own contender; he vowed to re-sign with the Boston Celtics but instead followed good friend Kevin Durant to the Brooklyn Nets; and he abandoned that feel-good homecoming in favor of rejoining James on the Los Angeles Lakers. All of this occurred in the span of six years.
Also in that span, including playoffs, Irving missed 30% of his games with the Celtics, 50% of his games with the Nets and 30% (and counting) of his games with the Dallas Mavericks for reasons ranging from injuries to an anti-vaccination campaign to his suspension for promoting an antisemitic film on social media.
It is difficult to say which has been more frustrating for his teams over the years — the excusable injuries or his deliberate subversion. Knee surgery kept him from Boston's 2018 Eastern Conference finals run, and he quit on the Celtics in the second round of the 2019 playoffs. On the Nets, he opted out of the 2020 bubble and protested New York's vaccine mandate throughout the 2021-22 season, inciting James Harden's exit, before fully imploding the roster in February. In between, a sprained ankle sidelined him for an overtime Game 7 loss in the second round of the 2021 playoffs. That brings us to February, when he joined the sixth-place Mavericks before his nagging right foot injury preceded a failure to make the playoffs.
(That is quite something for a future Hall of Fame player when you lay it all out.)
None of it prevented Irving from re-signing in Dallas over the summer on a three-year, $120 million contract, the one that became trade-eligible Friday. Notably, it was not the four-year, $200 million max contract he wanted.
Now, here is where things would get really interesting if everything about Irving weren't fascinating already. He received permission from the Nets to pursue a sign-and-trade transaction in June 2022, and the Lakers were the only known team to pursue him, but the two sides could not reach an agreement. Nor could Irving maneuver his way to the Lakers in February, despite their mutual interest. James publicly pined for Irving prior to last season's trade deadline and expressed disappointment when the Lakers failed to land him.
The two rekindled those reports when, weeks from free agency, Irving greeted James on the sidelines of the Lakers' close-out Game 6 victory against the Memphis Grizzlies in the first round of last season's playoffs. The Lakers' loss in the Western Conference finals was followed by multiple reports that James was pressuring his team to sign Irving. Speculation ran rampant that James' short-lived retirement threat was part of that ploy.
The Lakers' front office reportedly lost interest in adding Irving after the team's surprise run to the conference finals, preferring instead to re-sign the new additions who helped them get there. That said, it's unclear if the Mavericks' refusal to consider a sign-and-trade scenario prompted the Lakers' newfound disinterest. Whatever the reason, a longstanding mutual desire for a reunion was certainly not extinguished when one of their camps leaked word that Irving actually tried recruiting James to the Mavericks in the offseason.
This was ridiculous, of course, considering that James has established roots in Los Angeles that include multiple homes, a business and his oldest son's freshman season at the University of Southern California.
Hoisting the NBA Cup might have quelled early concerns about the Lakers this season. Even still, they remain as close to ninth place in the West as they do a home playoff seed, and their middling +1.1 net rating suggests another play-in tournament berth is within bounds. Might they rekindle a pursuit of Irving if their playoff road gets too steep? It never seemed like coincidence that the Lakers collected tradable mid-tier contracts over the summer, many of which are now eligible to be traded, including D'Angelo Russell.
Now, why would the Mavericks consider trading Irving? By all accounts, he has been a good citizen in Dallas, and they're fourth in the West — half a game up on the Lakers. He is also nursing another right foot injury for an indefinite amount of time, sporting a walking boot and crutches last we saw him.
Yet beyond the injury concerns, Irving's history leaves an underlying anxiety for any organization that he could tear the rug from beneath his team at any moment. In Dallas, that could also mean threatening the front office's relationship with Luka Dončić. This was always the concern with the Mavs' acquisition of Irving.
He is a remarkable talent. He has not illustrated that Dallas is demonstrably better with him on the roster. The Mavericks own a better record without Irving this season (5-2) than with him (10-7) — same as last season. In fact, the last time Irving's team finished a season with a better record when he was in the lineup was seven seasons ago in 2017-18, the year the Celtics reached another conference finals without him.
Plenty of factors play a role in that strange development, but his last meaningful playoff impact came seven seasons and three franchises ago. Jalen Brunson has as many playoff win shares the past three seasons as Irving has since he made the title-winning triple in the 2016 NBA Finals. We also have 13 seasons of evidence to show that Irving's teams are only marginally better in games he plays (.549 winning percentage) than in games he does not (.521). That is the difference between a 45-win team and a 43-win team.
If a team were to offer enough value to offset that loss, the Mavericks should ask themselves: Is it worth tying Irving's $40 million salary to the final three years of Dončić's deal, considering that their ceiling together is stuck below championship level? An affirmative, given Irving's compounding injury and chemistry concerns, could eventually mean facing a reality in which nobody, not even the Lakers, is willing to assume the risk.
Determination: Fact. Kyrie Irving trade rumors should never stop.
