The Cavaliers Might Still Be Asking Boston For More In The Kyrie Irving Trade (UPDATED)

Eight days after the Cavaliers and Celtics agreed to a deal to send Kyrie Irving to Boston in exchange for Isaiah Thomas, Jae Crowder, Ante Zizic, and Brooklyn’s unprotected 2018 first round pick, nothing has been finalized. However, it appears as though the end to the posturing and back-and-forth in the media regarding Thomas’ hip and potential changes to the deal will come to a merciful end.

The Cavaliers had reportedly been concerned about Thomas’ hip following a physical and were considering asking the Celtics for additional pieces for Irving to offset Thomas’ poor health. The Celtics weren’t willing to part with much more, if anything, and they were insistent that they’d told the Cavs everything ahead of time and shouldn’t need to part with anything else.

There were then reports that this was the Cavs’ plan all along, and they hadn’t even found anything new in Thomas’ physical. Thomas made his first public statement about his health on Tuesday, expressing his anger and frustration with the reports and claiming he’d be fine going forward. After all of that, it seems as though Cleveland has given up on the dream of getting more in the trade package, per an Adrian Wojnarowski report cited on SportsCenter.

This would, one would assume, put an end to all this nonsense and mean the deal should go through as originally constructed. The deadline for the deal to be voided or finalized is Wednesday, so it would appear as though Boston successfully called the Cavs’ bluff and will acquire Irving as intended over a week ago.

That said, nothing about this trade has been easy, so until the physicals go through and we see players at press conferences with new uniforms, we’ll be cautious.

Update: So, yeah, about all that. Apparently the ESPN graphic on screen was wrong and Wojnarowski denies reporting what the bottom third said he had. Here is the video with the report that was mistakenly placed on the screen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2fB87vA98A

Update No. 2: The trade got done! The Cavs will acquire the Heat’s 2020 second round pick from Boston in addition to the original package, thus ending this ridiculous saga.