Tag: flat

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The year is 2021. I am blogging about the Lakers. The team has failed to defend its title and is trading Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and Kyle Kuzma while letting Alex Caruso walk for nothing, and replacing them with Russell Westbrook.

The year is 2024. I am blogging about the NBA. The Denver Nuggets have failed to defend their title, and are letting Kentavious Caldwell-Pope leave for the Orlando Magic, and may add Russell Westbrook to their backcourt in his stead:

Further proving that NBA time may move in patterns rather than a series of unique events, this would also be the second time in two seasons that a team has salary-dumped Reggie Jackson to the Hornets in order to make room to add Russell Westbrook.

Now, obviously the context of these situations is different. The Lakers didn’t send out Caldwell-Pope and Kuzma for Westbrook because of second apron considerations (they are cheap and will likely never cross the second apron, but it didn’t exist yet). They just made a dumb trade.

The Nuggets are cheaping out on KCP not just for financial reasons or because they think Westbrook is as good or better, but also to avoid the myriad of actual roster penalties that would come from extending him at his market value, as my friend Ryan Blackburn summarized well recently at Mile High Sports:

Unfortunately, writing a blank check, while certainly appealing to Caldwell-Pope, is not in the best interest of the Nuggets competitively. The second tax apron, a new stipulation agreed upon in the Collective Bargaining Agreement, isn’t just a financial burden, but a competitive one. The Nuggets will not be able to make competitive trades if they are over the second apron. They will not be able to use the Taxpayer Mid-Level Exception in free agency. Even their first round draft pick in 2032 will be “frozen” if they finish the end of the 2024-25 season over the second apron, meaning they cannot use it in future trades. If they stay above the second apron in three of the next five seasons, that 2032 first round draft pick will be automatically sent to the end of the first round, regardless of Denver’s record.

Still, while the context may be different, it’s still hard not to feel like Dr. Manhattan from Watchmen here while watching the Nuggets echo the Lakers’ previous mistake. Replacing the ultimate 3-and-D wing with the ultimate… well, opposite of those two qualities didn’t work out for the Lakers. Maybe Jokic making Westbrook a champion is the final way he can more thoroughly defeat LeBron James, Anthony Davis and the Lakers… but it’s difficult not to be skeptical that may be beyond even his talents.

So we’ll see if this works out better for Denver than it did the Lakers, but for now, it’s hard not to be tired of Earth. These people. Tired of being caught in the tangle of their lives.

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It’s going to be another trip around the sun before Kyrie Irving gets a chance at his second NBA championship, and he only has himself to blame. This was his opportunity, his moment to cement a legacy that exists outside of LeBron James. Now after a horrific NBA Finals series against the Celtics, it’s difficult to argue for much beyond Kyrie being in the “Hall of Very Good.”

There was only one game in these NBA Finals where Irving played like himself at all, and that was Game 4 — which the Celtics treated like a rest day so they could close out the series in Boston. In the games that mattered Irving was such a non-factor that he was rarely the 3rd, or even 4th best option on the Mavericks. His stats outside of that Game 4 speak for themselves.

  • 31-of-81 from the field (.382), 7-of-23 from three (.304), 4.75 assists per game, 8 turnovers.

Even if we include back in Game 4, the only contest where he was even a shadow of himself, Irving still finished the 2024 NBA Finals by scoring 99 points on 99 field goal attempts. A mediocre performance for a middling point guard, let alone someone who is often hailed as one of the best players in the NBA.

To be fair, Irving’s talent speaks for itself. He’s one of the best iso scorers not just in the modern NBA, but that the game’s ever seen. Kyrie’s blend of jaw-dropping handles paired with an ability to score anywhere on the floor is the reason that night-in-night-out he could go off for 50 at any given moment if a team doesn’t have a way to stop him. The problem is that while Irving might be one of the best improvisational ball handlers in basketball, if he’s met with so much as a stiff breeze he’s rendered unable to adjust and change his game to compensate for how opponents try to stop him.

Entering the NBA Finals here was no doubt this was going to be a tough series for Dallas on paper. They didn’t match up great against the Celtics’ defensive-focused backcourt of Jrue Holliday and Derrick White, while simultaneously not having great options to handle Jayson Tatum and Jalen Brown. Still, there was the ever-present hope that the Mavericks could actually do this, because we’d been conditioned to overlook the defensive deficiencies of Kyrie and Luka Doncic, instead focusing on their scoring prowess.

This season for the Mavericks was defined by Luka and Kyrie, and neither really rose to the occasion in the finals. There’s no question Doncic struggled at times against the Boston backcourt, but he wasn’t a liability on the court the same was Irving was.

Dallas is Irving’s fourth stop in his career, and the third where he was brought in as “the missing piece,” only to fall apart in the Finals. Only twice in his career has Irving managed to play with the same level of regular season success in the postseason, and both came with LeBron James in Cleveland when they won a ring in 2015-16, and returned to the finals in 2016-17.

It’s unclear what’s next for Kyrie Irving, because he remains one of the most mercurial players in the NBA. There is a path forward for Dallas, but it requires work. They have to find a reliable scoring option in the front court, and need to get tougher defensively — both of which are possible. However, these NBA Finals showed once more that a team can’t count on Irving to be the man to get them over the hump. There’s also a pattern of behavior here that when the work gets to be too much, Irving is just as likely to demand a trade than stick around for any retooling.

At this point that’s Kyrie Irving’s legacy: One of the best regular season players to ever step on the court.