Tuesday night was a particularly brutal one for the Cavaliers. The confluence of losing Game 2 of the Eastern Conference Finals merged with the NBA Draft lottery to form a sewage soup that reminded us just how bad their Kyrie Irving trade was.
The Cavaliers’ horrible Kyrie Irving trade never looked worse than on Tuesday night
It’s worse than we ever possibly imagined.
Photo by Maddie Meyer/Getty Images
James Dator has been covering a wide range of sports for SB Nation for over a decade, with a special focus on the NFL.
As a reminder, this is how it all went down: The Cavaliers traded Kyrie to the Celtics for a package involving Isaiah Thomas, who ended up being an abject disaster in Cleveland. So the team blew up their roster at the deadline and traded Thomas away to the Lakers, with Derrick Rose and Iman Shumpert leaving as well. When the dust settled, the Cavaliers ended up with the following:
George Hill, Rodney Hood, Jordan Clarkson, Larry Nance Jr., Ante Zizic, and the No. 8 overall pick.
There’s a real Jack and the Beanstalk quality about trading one of the best point guards in the NBA for a handful of magic beans, but at least there was an underlying belief that this already horrible trade wouldn’t be a disaster if the Cavaliers landed a top-three pick in a draft stacked with talent at the top. Alas, the ping-pong balls didn’t break Cleveland’s way, and their 9.9 percent chance of getting a top pick was dashed.
Look, you can remove yourself from all this and say “Well, Kyrie wasn’t happy — and at least the Cavaliers rounded out their roster and could find someone at No. 8,” but look at what that cavalcade of mediocrity got them on Tuesday night:
Five points, 2-for-7 shooting, seven rebounds, two assist, two steals
That’s it. Seriously, that’s it. That is the stat line that Hill, Hood, and Nance Jr. all combined for on Tuesday night, while Clarkson and Zizic didn’t play. Kyle Kover had a better line, ARON BAYNES had a better line. The Cavaliers basically traded one of the best point guards in the NBA, who’s still in his mid-20s with tons left in the tank, for a sub-par Aron Baynes Voltron and a player-to-be-named with an odds-on statistical ceiling to be a 10-and-5 guy at best.
It’s rare that we can live through something and realize so quickly that it was legendary, but this trade might end up being one of the worst of all time. We are all witnesses.
