Farewell Kyrie Irving
Posted: Wed Aug 23, 2017 4:36 pm
So let's start with the good: Kyrie is probably the second best pure scorer (behind only LBJ) to ever wear a Cavs uniform. His handle is elite. His ability to finish for a guard is elite. His three point shooting is really good. He's fearless. For the most part, he's clutch. Watching him take it into the heart of the Warriors defense like a boss over the last two Finals was amazing. It reminded me of the Ali quote: *It ain't bragging if you can do it.* Kyrie's performance in the Finals will be one of my better Cleveland sports memories until I'm watching from the hereafter.
The bad: Everything else. I mean everything. Kyrie is an awful PNR defender. Really awful. But he can play passable defense in general when he expends energy. He almost never does so. How many times did opposing PGs, whatever their skill level, have great games against Kyrie over the course of his career?
Kyrie is certainly capable of averaging 3 or 4 more assists per game. I'd like to know how many assists he averaged when LBJ didn't play since LBJ came back. I'd be surprised if his assist ratio is any higher with LBJ off the court than it is when LBJ was running the point. He just doesn't care about getting his teammates going or making them better. He's a 2 guard in a PG's body and I don't see that changing. He makes himself easier to defend because in critical situations, indeed over the course of entire games, no one in the building thinks Kyrie is going to pass. Watching Kyrie go one on three, or four, as a matter of course, as opposed to when it's absolutely necessary, is not something I'm going to miss.
Kyrie is a lousy teammate and he's a very difficult player to coach. There's also been numerous reports about how the Cavs F.O. had to repeatedly manage Kyrie's moodiness. I consider him to be a pretty disingenuous person. I've seen his Eddie Haskell routine too often. How many times since he was drafted has he said all the right things and then defaulted right back to not playing defense and not passing the ball? Byron Scott said that after Kyrie made the all star team as a rookie, he just stopped listening to him. Scott got fired. Mike Brown made Jarett friggin Jack PG because Kyrie wouldn't pass despite the team's poor performance with Kyrie playing hero ball. Brown got fired. There may have been good reasons for firing both coaches but a player on a rookie contract undermining not one, but two, coaches is a problem.
If there's one game that encapsulates the downside of Kyrie, it's the 2014 Jazz game after the big three first came together. The coaching staff was concerned about K. Love getting shut out of the offense. During a film session they emphasized getting Love going early in front of the entire team. The next game was against a bad Jazz team. Kyrie fired up the chuckamatic, had zero assists, and the Cavs lost. Kyrie is not going to sacrifice his scoring even if it means making his team better. Not even in a meaningless early season game on a team that has championship aspirations. Not even after the Cavs gave up Wiggins & a 1st to acquire Love. Which leads me to my last point...
LBJ was the best thing to happen to Kyrie's career. If he's going to play the way he wants to play, and be on a winning team, he needs to be next to a point forward who can get his teammates involved. He also needs to play next to an alpha like LBJ who will go to him after he gets zero assists and say that can't happen again. It's kind of hard for me to get my head around how self absorbed Kyrie must be not to see any of his flaws and to request a trade, with two years left on his contract, and off a team that's been to a Finals three years in a row.
As far as the trade: The narrative is that the trade was win-win or the Cavs won. From my perspective, it was really a best-out-of-a-bad-situation trade for both teams.
IT got caught up in his own hype with all that brink-truck talk. The Celtics weren't going to win a championship with IT as the best player on that team and he would've been practically untradeable on a max contract. The Celtics already had to trade good players for meh returns in order to clear space for Hayward. If IT walked next summer, they would've had to do that again. IT's contract situation was a time bomb that needed to be defused and he tanked his own trade value by insisting he would only take a max deal. So the Celtics defused that and, on paper, upgraded the position.
For the Cavs, they had to get value for Kyrie. I suspect that the Cavs had enough of the young man after the trade request. On paper, the Cavs won the trade but it really comes down to IT's health this year and how good that Brooklyn pick is at the end of the year. I'm not going to get into it, because this post is more than long enough, but this trade could end up being bad for both teams.
The bad: Everything else. I mean everything. Kyrie is an awful PNR defender. Really awful. But he can play passable defense in general when he expends energy. He almost never does so. How many times did opposing PGs, whatever their skill level, have great games against Kyrie over the course of his career?
Kyrie is certainly capable of averaging 3 or 4 more assists per game. I'd like to know how many assists he averaged when LBJ didn't play since LBJ came back. I'd be surprised if his assist ratio is any higher with LBJ off the court than it is when LBJ was running the point. He just doesn't care about getting his teammates going or making them better. He's a 2 guard in a PG's body and I don't see that changing. He makes himself easier to defend because in critical situations, indeed over the course of entire games, no one in the building thinks Kyrie is going to pass. Watching Kyrie go one on three, or four, as a matter of course, as opposed to when it's absolutely necessary, is not something I'm going to miss.
Kyrie is a lousy teammate and he's a very difficult player to coach. There's also been numerous reports about how the Cavs F.O. had to repeatedly manage Kyrie's moodiness. I consider him to be a pretty disingenuous person. I've seen his Eddie Haskell routine too often. How many times since he was drafted has he said all the right things and then defaulted right back to not playing defense and not passing the ball? Byron Scott said that after Kyrie made the all star team as a rookie, he just stopped listening to him. Scott got fired. Mike Brown made Jarett friggin Jack PG because Kyrie wouldn't pass despite the team's poor performance with Kyrie playing hero ball. Brown got fired. There may have been good reasons for firing both coaches but a player on a rookie contract undermining not one, but two, coaches is a problem.
If there's one game that encapsulates the downside of Kyrie, it's the 2014 Jazz game after the big three first came together. The coaching staff was concerned about K. Love getting shut out of the offense. During a film session they emphasized getting Love going early in front of the entire team. The next game was against a bad Jazz team. Kyrie fired up the chuckamatic, had zero assists, and the Cavs lost. Kyrie is not going to sacrifice his scoring even if it means making his team better. Not even in a meaningless early season game on a team that has championship aspirations. Not even after the Cavs gave up Wiggins & a 1st to acquire Love. Which leads me to my last point...
LBJ was the best thing to happen to Kyrie's career. If he's going to play the way he wants to play, and be on a winning team, he needs to be next to a point forward who can get his teammates involved. He also needs to play next to an alpha like LBJ who will go to him after he gets zero assists and say that can't happen again. It's kind of hard for me to get my head around how self absorbed Kyrie must be not to see any of his flaws and to request a trade, with two years left on his contract, and off a team that's been to a Finals three years in a row.
As far as the trade: The narrative is that the trade was win-win or the Cavs won. From my perspective, it was really a best-out-of-a-bad-situation trade for both teams.
IT got caught up in his own hype with all that brink-truck talk. The Celtics weren't going to win a championship with IT as the best player on that team and he would've been practically untradeable on a max contract. The Celtics already had to trade good players for meh returns in order to clear space for Hayward. If IT walked next summer, they would've had to do that again. IT's contract situation was a time bomb that needed to be defused and he tanked his own trade value by insisting he would only take a max deal. So the Celtics defused that and, on paper, upgraded the position.
For the Cavs, they had to get value for Kyrie. I suspect that the Cavs had enough of the young man after the trade request. On paper, the Cavs won the trade but it really comes down to IT's health this year and how good that Brooklyn pick is at the end of the year. I'm not going to get into it, because this post is more than long enough, but this trade could end up being bad for both teams.
