The Cavaliers And Celtics Have Reached A Final Agreement For The Kyrie Irving Trade

The Cavaliers and Celtics have finally reached a final agreement on the trade to send Kyrie Irving to Boston. After a week of posturing regarding Isaiah Thomas’ physical, the Cavs got the Celtics to part ways with one more future asset, albeit a minor one, in addition to the original package of Thomas, Jae Crowder, Ante Zizic, and Brooklyn’s 2018 unprotected first round pick.

According to ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski and Dave McMenamin, late Wednesday night as the deadline to complete the deal was approaching, Cleveland was continuing to engage Boston in talks and wanted another first round pick to be added to the deal, but the Celtics wouldn’t budge.

Minutes after that report, Wojnarowski reported that a deal was done, and a 2020 second round pick was being thrown in by Boston to appease the Cavaliers.

The second round pick heading to Cleveland will be the Miami Heat’s 2020 second rounder, according to USA Today’s Jeff Zillgitt and others.

The Celtics made it official just after midnight, sending out a release with all of the details of the finally completed trade, including an exasperated “the trade is now complete,” at the end for good measure.

The agreement brings the week-long saga to an end and finally puts a wrap on one of the craziest trades in recent NBA memory. In this deal, we saw two All-Star point guards traded for each other between conference rivals that are the consensus top two teams in the East, followed by eight days of posturing and media reports about the health of Thomas’ hip and how much the Cavs knew about it going into the original trade.

As it turns out, the report that Boston wouldn’t give up more than a second rounder proved to be true, despite Cleveland’s efforts to get more than that. In the end, it makes sense that both teams would ensure this trade got done, even if the addition feels like such a minuscule thing to have fought over and threatened to collapse the entire deal for. Boston couldn’t risk the trade being vetoed and Thomas returning after everything that went down, and the Cavaliers weren’t likely to get a better future asset than the Brooklyn pick in any other potential Irving trade.

Now, we can finally move forward and start looking towards their opening night meeting, which figures to be very awkward, emotional, and possibly testy as the two rivals meet with former stars squaring off with their old squads.