Zach Lowe of ESPN floated a really fun trade in a column on Monday. The Cleveland Cavaliers would comply with Kyrie Irving‘s request for a trade and ship him to New Orleans. In exchange, the Pelicans would end their hopes of a DeMarcus Cousins-Anthony Davis frontcourt pairing and send Boogie to the Cleveland.
It makes sense for both sides — the Cavs would have the best frontcourt trio in the league with LeBron James, Kevin Love, and Cousins. The Pelicans would have an unreal pick-and-roll pairing in Irving and Davis. Sure, Cleveland would take a major risk by bringing in a dude who is only under contract for one more year, but this is one of those rare superstar-for-superstar trades that makes sense.
We decided to figure out what would go down if this trade happened and the two teams played, with a little help from NBA 2K. The entire game is on our Facebook page, and you can watch it right here.
Now, if you don’t have an hour and 20 minutes to spend watching this, the Cavs won by 22.
As you could guess, the Cavs bullied the Pelicans, outscoring them by 24 points in the paint and pulling down 12 more rebounds. It also didn’t help the Pelicans that they suffered from a lack of scoring outside of their dynamic duo.
As for the Cavs, two things stood out. One is that their new big three would play really well together. The other is that Deron Williams would see a big time spike in minutes and would turn into a star again if an Irving trade happened.
Unfortunately, this throwback performance didn’t earn Williams game MVP honors. Instead, that went to LeBron James for throwing down a 32-point, 10-rebound, and six assist evening.
A Kyrie-for-Boogie swap would certainly be ambitious, but if you ask NBA 2K, the Cavs could definitely come out on top.
