While the Cleveland Cavaliers have watched the NBA Playoffs from home for the first time since 2013-2014, the Boston Celtics will now join them as spectators, after losing Game 5 of the second round to the Milwaukee Bucks 116-91.
While the early postseason exit is disappointing enough for Boston, they have bigger things to worry about. Gordon Hayward is playing on a max contract and had an awful series. Big man Al Horford can opt out of his deal this offseason. Their treasure trove of high draft picks is empty after next month. They are $23 million over the salary cap.
And, most importantly, superstar point guard Kyrie Irving will be a free agent, and there is a very real chance that Irving has played his final game for the Celtics.
You would have been laughed at for posing this question just one year ago, but could the Cavs actually have come out on top of the disastrous Kyrie Irving deal?
In order to provide an answer, we must first outline what the final trade looked like.
CLE receives: PG Isaiah Thomas, SF Jae Crowder, C Ante Zizic, 2018 first-round pick (8th overall, PG Collin Sexton), 2020 MIA second-round pick
BOS receives: PG Kyrie Irving
At the time, it looked like an excellent deal for Cleveland. They got an All-Star MVP candidate to replace Irving, and added a great backup to LeBron James, along with an expected top-five draft pick. Boston was going all-in, pairing Irving with All-Star Gordon Hayward, Al Horford, and their young core than included Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown.
But as news began to come out about Thomas' hip injury in the 2016-2017 playoffs, things didn't look so great for the Cavs. Thomas didn't end up making his Cavaliers debut until January of 2018, and played just 15 games before being shipped off to the Los Angeles Lakers in a salary dump. His injury had clearly sapped him of his lateral quickness, just as it did with former Minnesota Timberwolves' star Jonny Flynn.
For a player as undersized as Thomas, being unable to consistently beat defenders with explosiveness was a death sentence. He couldn't explode to the hoop and score inside, his shooting was terrible, and he was not a willing passer. He also became a locker room cancer, even reportedly calling out Kevin Love for missing a game due to his well-documented mental health struggles.
Perhaps things would have been different if Thomas wasn't damaged goods, but his play style just didn't appear to be a fit next to James. Advanced stats pointed to Thomas succeeding with James, as he excelled in catch-and-shoot three-pointer opportunities in Boston, but things just didn't work in Cleveland.
His teammate, Crowder, also failed to live up to expectations, and was also traded in February. Trading two of the three players received from the Celtics just months later was not a good look, and Zizic was a reserve player, hardly seeing the floor.
To make matters worse, the Brooklyn Nets were not nearly as bad as they were expected to be, and the draft pick ended up being eighth overall in a top-heavy class. Cleveland selected Alabama's Collin Sexton, and he had some historically bad numbers over the first half of 2018-2019.
Irving had a solid first season in Boston, helping lead the Celtics to the second seed in the Eastern Conference. However, due to two surgeries, he missed the entire postseason. He played 67 regular season games in 2018-2019, and each playoff game, but the whole year had an odd feeling to it. Irving's pending free agency loomed large, and his comments weren't reassuring, saying things like “I don't owe this organization anything”, to go along with his usual odd pseudo-philosopher statements.
Kyrie Irving had a good game in Boston's opening victory over Milwaukee, but laid an egg for the rest of the series, shooting a combined 25 of 83 from the field. After he went 8-22 in Game 2, Irving had this to say:
Kyrie Irving: "It's really just about being efficient, especially the rest of this series. From this point on I don't think you'll see another 8 for 22 or any missed layups or looking for the refs for calls or anything like that."
— Jay King (@ByJayKing) May 4, 2019
He was right. In Game 3, he shot 7-22. His response to his continued poor play? “Who cares?” His post-game comments and body language Wednesday night wasn't a great look:
WATCH: Kyrie Irving post game
"The taste of feeling defeat in this type of style being down 4-1, I haven't felt. For me it's moving on to the next thing and seeing where that ends up" #Celtics @wpri12 pic.twitter.com/7QpdXxXBEd
— Yianni Kourakis (@WPBF_Yianni) May 9, 2019
Irving's reasoning for forcing a trade out of Cleveland was apparently his desire to step out from the shadow of LeBron James and lead his own team. It's safe to say he's failed disastrously in every aspect. From showing up on the court in crunch time to dealing with the media, Irving has seemed overwhelmed and uninterested. He has reportedly been acting distant from his teammates, just as he did during his final days with the Cavs.
Of course nothing can be final until Irving makes his free agency decision, but the trade doesn't look great for either team at this point. Boston's experiment has been an utter failure, but it's difficult to imagine them doing any better with Thomas, Crowder, and the Brooklyn pick still on the team. The Cavs have just half of the trade package remaining, but at the very least Sexton played extremely well after the All-Star break.
Even if the Celtics are able to keep Irving long-term, can they even say the won the trade? Will things be different in the future, or are they doomed to the same toxic, selfish, and disappointing performance and atmosphere that followed the team this season? Only time will tell, and as Kryie Irving would agree, time is a flat circle.
Follow Us
Subscribe