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Brooklyn Nets star Kyrie Irving admitted he reached out to the franchise early in free agency, telling him he had friends he wanted to bring along with him, according to SNY's Ian Begley.
The friends he talked about are Kevin Durant and DeAndre Jordan, who was the last addition of the three after the Nets traded D'Angelo Russell in return for Durant, allowing Brooklyn to have the necessary cap space to sign Jordan.
Yet Irving's own admission is the manifestation of what the NBA league office is trying to stop, as there is no way Irving had these talks with his friends in the mere opening minutes of free agency. Both Durant and Jordan were reportedly talking to Irving all season long in hopes to play together, which would be under the constituted player-to-player tampering, as both players were under contract with the Golden State Warriors and the New York Knicks, respectively.
While the NBA has yet to devise a way to punish players that do this kind of recruiting — something that seems nearly impossible to do without some invasion of privacy — commissioner Adam Silver has been intent on getting rid of tampering altogether and getting all involved (players and teams) to cooperate on this mission.
Though there is little arguing that Irving's mission to bring his friends to a new place worked, as he wound up leaving the Boston Celtics to play with his best buds in a Brooklyn uniform.
