There was a time when it looked like the Kyrie Irving trade might not have gone down without some major changes. The Cleveland Cavaliers and the Boston Celtics agreed on a deal in principle, but it was contingent on players going through physicals. The Cavs were concerned with how Isaiah Thomas‘ hip looked after his examination, and there were rumblings that it might take something major for the deal to be completed.
Ultimately, the teams agreed on adding in a second-round draft pick to complete the deal. It seemed like a strange compromise, as there were indications that Thomas would miss an extended period of time due to his bad hip. Of course, that ended up happening, and Thomas didn’t play his first game of the season until January.
As Dave McMenamin and Brian Windhorst of ESPN reported on Sunday in a lengthy piece on Thomas’ tenure in Ohio before getting shipped to the Lakers, the business-savvy LeBron James wasn’t happy with this compromise. It has been reported in the past that James wasn’t happy from a basketball perspective, but as they wrote, James thought the team settled when it had all the leverage in the situation.
Via ESPN:
Had the Cavs backed out, which they considered doing for several days, the Celtics would have been in a tough position. They had already celebrated Irving’s arrival and would have alienated Thomas and Jae Crowder. Adding to the Cavs’ leverage was the nature of Thomas’ hip injury becoming public, thereby further diminishing his trade value and putting Boston in an even tighter spot if the deal fell through.
When the dust settled, the fact that Cleveland got only a second-round pick after pausing the deal — and not an additional first-rounder or young player such as Jayson Tatum, Jaylen Brown or Terry Rozier — didn’t just disappoint James as a basketball player. It disappointed him as a businessman.
At the time, there were plenty of people who couldn’t believe Cleveland made the teams return to the negotiating table just to get a second rounder back. It was a major trade for the Cavs in which the best player they got back had a potentially perilous injury, so the fact that their return was bolstered with one of the least-valuable things a team can get back in a move was peculiar.
If you were among the people who thought Cleveland should have tried to get something more concrete back after the news of Thomas’ injury became public, you’re not alone, because the best player in the world was perplexed, too.
