Superstar shuffle
Cavaliers and Celtics swap guards
Behold the power of a LeBron James whisper.
When you’re the greatest player in today’s NBA and you let all that leaguewide chatter go unchecked about how you might leave Cleveland in free agency for a second time next summer, this is the chaos that ensues.
Your Cleveland Cavaliers costar, four-time All-Star Kyrie Irving, decides he doesn’t want to play with uncertainty all season, then asks for a trade that was granted Tuesday in the form of a deal with the Boston Celtics that gives Cleveland two-time All-Star point guard Isaiah Thomas, veteran small forward Jae Crowder, promising young big man Ante Zizic and — a key part of the trade — the Brooklyn Nets’ first-round pick in 2018.
Your team’s owner, Dan Gilbert, who wreaked havoc on the Cavs offseason and frustrated James by firing general manager Dave Griffin and assistant general manager Trent Redden, green-lights the Irving trade, in large part because it offers protections against your potential departure — never mind that it might have elevated the Celtics to a state of Eastern Conference supremacy. Your new general manager, a 34-year-old named Koby Altman who was promoted after the Griffin-Redden exit, finds himself forced to plan on two tracks.
Life with LeBron and life without LeBron.
With James’ future yet again a story line that won’t die down until the calendar sees July again, this was about as good as the Cavs could have hoped for. They get an elite player to help James & Co. make another run at the Eastern Conference crown for this season, all while landing the kind of rebuilding asset (the Nets’ pick) that
could yield a franchise player of its own next June.
But questions remain about Thomas, who was hobbled by a serious hip injury during the most recent playoffs and is still set to have tests before training camp to establish his status. What’s more, the fact that he infamously called for the Celtics to “Back up the Brink’s truck” next summer when he’s eligible for a huge payday of his own means Cleveland will have to eventually find clarity on this front. For James’ part, he’s on record as a huge fan of Thomas.
“(The Celtics) got a clear-cut star, and that’s Isaiah,” James said in late December. “The notion that they don’t have a star, I think, is fugazi as Donnie Brasco would say. Earlier I was watching the movie. So they’re a good team for a reason, and it starts with the head of the snake, and that’s Isaiah.”
Meanwhile in Boston, they have every reason to spend a few nights celebrating over at Four’s as they did in the good old championship days.
If Irving clicks with this Celtics group that finished tops in the East last regular season, fell to the Cavs in five games in the conference finals and landed All-Star small forward Gordon Hayward in July, then this could go down as one of the more memorable deals in recent NBA lore.
It’s not every day that you see star players dealt to their rivals, let alone a player in Irving who has two years left on his deal and very well might decide to re-sign when the summer of 2019 rolls around if another Celtics dynasty is born by then. These are the things that happen when a player of LeBron’s ilk makes his incumbent team nervous that he won’t stay.
Only time will tell if he should have silenced this story that surrounds him.