By now, there’s been so much written about Kyrie Irving‘s breakup with the Cleveland Cavaliers that most hoops fans feel like they have a pretty good idea of what went down. But thanks to Dave McMenamin of ESPN, we learned a new detail about the meeting that sparked Irving’s decision to request a trade, which ended with him joining the Boston Celtics.
McMenamin wrote that the Cavaliers decided to hold a meeting on the day of the 2017 NBA Draft. It wasn’t anything malicious; the team just had a “‘what if?’ discussion about Kyrie Irving’s future.” But instead of keeping the “thought exercise anticipating what the market could bear” should Irving be put on the trade block between two or three members of the organization, this was a wide-ranging meeting including people up and down the organization.
Once word came back to Irving that this happened, the All-Star point guard was reportedly not happy.
The talk got back to Irving, multiple team sources told ESPN, and that served as the tipping point that led to Irving formally requesting a trade a little more than two weeks later.
“It was sloppy,” one league source familiar with the draft-day discussion told ESPN, adding that any talk about trading a player of Irving’s ilk — however informal it might be — should be handled strictly between the GM and owner, because of the sensitive nature of its content. Once a player feels expendable or undervalued from his own team, getting him to buy back in is a prickly proposition.
The Cavaliers didn’t necessarily do anything wrong; they just handled things terribly. Every team needs to be prepared for every situation that could realistically pop up, but there’s a difference between being prepared and being reckless, which Cleveland seems to have done. McMenamin even wrote that some view it as “the consequential moment that led to the trade.”
