While some of the league’s biggest stars still can’t decide their hoops fates until July 1, the blockbuster trade that sent Kristaps Porzingis from the New York Knicks to the Dallas Mavericks on Thursday came with all sorts of potential ramifications and one central question.
Can the Knicks turn this KP deal into a free agency KO by bringing Kevin Durant
and Kyrie Irving to town?
It has never looked more possible.
All around the league, executives who are paid handsomely to track this sort of thing had the same takeaway: The Knicks, who have been widely known to be targeting Durant for so long now and whose general manager (Scott Perry) was part of the Seattle SuperSonics front office team that drafted him out of Texas in 2007, must be very confident that they’re going to get the Golden State star. Some rival executives even reported that Knicks officials themselves have been expressing a very high level of optimism on this front.
The Oklahoma City Thunder are on Line One, by the way, wanting to discuss the dangers of Durant and premature free agency speculation. But I digress.
Trading Tim Hardaway Jr., Courtney Lee and Trey Burke to Dallas gives the Knicks the salary cap runway for the two max salary slots they would need, all while coming at the cost of a franchise centerpiece player in Porzingis who is the only one who might have yielded a superstar like, say, the disgruntled Anthony Davis via trade this season.
Translation: This is the kind of gamble that leaves everyone saying, “What do they know that we don’t?” And, no, the two first-round picks coming New York’s way weren’t enough to quell the noise about what this move truly meant.
This KD-to-NYC storyline has been front and center for quite some time now, with Durant’s business manager,
New York native and lifelong Knicks fan Rich Kleiman, pouring kerosene on this free agency fire last February when he tweeted,
“Imma run the Knicks one day.” Durant’s early-season rift with the Warriors’ Draymond Green took it to yet another level, with video of that infamous Clippers game on Nov. 12 appearing to show Durant saying, “
That’s why I’m out.”
Add in the growing concern from rival teams that the Knicks will offer Kleiman a job as part of their plan, and the fact that Durant and Perry are known to still have a good relationship, and you start to understand why New York had everyone’s attention even before this monumental move. But if this truly is in the works, if Durant is planning to bounce from the Bay and take on that yeoman’s challenge of bringing glory back to the Garden, it’s just the sort of thing that will keep the Boston Celtics brass up at night from now until this summer.
Let me explain.
For all the talk of Irving’s
recent apology to LeBron James and the idea that Irving might renege on his October promise to re-sign in order to reunite with his former Cleveland Cavaliers co-star with the Lakers, a source with knowledge of the Celtics’ thinking said there is little to no concern about that prospect within their green walls. A source close to James said he would be open to the possibility of playing with Irving again, and even highlighted his well-chronicled history of reconciliation with Cavs owner Dan Gilbert as empirical evidence that he doesn’t hold grudges.
Nonetheless,
the Lakers are not seen by Boston as a serious threat to steal Irving away.
What’s more, Davis might be the one filling that co-star role soon in Laker Land if Magic Johnson and Rob Pelinka can strike a deal with Pelicans general manager Dell Demps before the Feb. 7 trade deadline. That is, of course, if the Celtics can’t convince New Orleans to wait until this summer to send Davis their way (as we discussed
here, Boston can’t trade for Davis until Irving is a free agent because of the league’s
Rose rule).
As I reported on Tuesday, a source close to Irving said there’s no reason to believe he has changed his view from that fateful fan event where he said he was there to stay. But in light of all these developments, and with Irving’s well-chronicled locker room dynamic with his Celtics teammates leaving so many to wonder if his view might have changed, maybe it’s time for him to speak up again.
And talk about timing: The Celtics just so happen to play in New York on Friday. Irving, the 26-year-old whose transparency in October set a tricky precedent, is expected to address the media for the first time since suffering a hip strain against Golden State on Saturday.
Yet even before the Porzingis deal cleared the way for the two max slots in New York, and with all these superstar puzzle pieces jumbled together in the kind of way that makes the overall picture so tricky to see, there was a belief in Celtics circles that the prospect of the Knicks getting Davis or Durant could spell trouble for Boston’s chances of holding onto Irving. Davis is unofficially off their blue and orange table now, but the prospect of landing Durant appears very much in play. And then maybe — just maybe — Irving too.
Never has such an awful team looked so dangerous.
