Nets trade Kyrie Irving to Mavericks for Dinwiddie, Finney-Smith & draft picks | NBA | UNDISPUTED

Kyrie has been the subject of so much controversy this season. Will this Dallas experiment work? Well, Skip, the thing is, why put them together if the objective isn't to win a championship? And I think the question is, how do these two ball-dominant players, both of these guys need the ball to be effective, how do they mesh? You give up Finney Smith, who's probably your most important wing defender, and you give up Dinwiddie, who's playing really well. He's shooting 40% from the three, averaging 17 points a game. Although Kyrie Irving is a better player, will he fit better? That's the question, Skip. Will he fit better than Dinwiddie did with Daunches? Now, we saw what Jalen Brunson did. The mistake was they let Brunson walk, and they didn't want to play the $20 million a year for four or five years. So now Kyrie's going to command $30 million more than the Brunson guy, $20 million. He's looking for $200-plus million a year. He is. I don't believe they make this deal without assurances that Kyrie said, okay, you do this deal, I'll resign. Because if you don't, if Kyrie doesn't resign, Skip, what have you done? Will it work? I think this, they probably have, let's see, as far as player for player, they might be one or two. I think Lakers, I think Anthony Davis and LeBron might be one. But they might have the second-best combo, Skip, in the, in the, in the, at least the Western Cardinals. Let's do, we just do Western Cardinals, because that's the objective. Let's, let's do West. They might have the second-best combo. Jamar Murray and Yoke might have something to say about that. Paul George, Kawhi. Maybe. They're, but I think they're like, they're no worse than three, if you combine those top three. Skip, defensively, big guys, how do they stop somebody from pounding them on the glass? How do they stop an inside president? How do they deal with How do they deal with, and so that's, that's my only thing, Skip. The objective is to win a championship. I think when Mark Cuban made this deal, he's looking at it like, okay, we did get to the Western Conference Finals with Jalen Brunson. I like to think Kyrie is a better player than Jalen Brunson, even though Jalen Brunson, I think, should be an all-star. He still might make it. Will it work? Skip, in terms of work, what do you mean? Do you mean championship? Or do you mean getting to winning the Western Conference? Will they win the West? That's the question. Can they? Will they? Should they? Will they win the West? I'm gonna say no. I'm gonna say no. I'm gonna say a big no. I thought you was gonna say a big yes. No. There are two bombshells this past weekend, one on Friday and one yesterday. Okay. And the first one was that Kyrie won it out. Right. And then I sat back and thought about that. I thought, well, he's actually doing the Nets a favor because they're out on him. Right. They're not gonna pay him. They've made it clear they're not going to pay him. And ESPN reported that it was a big sigh of relief within the confines of their organization when they finally got rid of him. Well, they said they wanted stipulations into the contract. Sure. The behavior that you kind of displayed over the last four years. How are you going to stipulate against? Right. So the first bombshell really wasn't a bombshell because the next actually needed to get rid of him because unless he would just be on his best behavior down the stretch and then just play his way out and then become a free agent at the end of the year. If the Nets had been able to stay together and win the championship this year, I guess you got me, right? I think that's what he was thinking. He comes up. You remember when they got because they went from like seventh, eighth and ninth all the way to like the two in a matter of weeks with Katie, right? So Kyrie is thinking, okay, we get Katie's injured right now. We get Katie back. They're thinking championship. Okay, let's do this extension. They're like, nah, we want to do now. We don't want to do this. He said, well, trade me knowing that we have an excellent chance to win the championship. He thought that would put more pressure on the Nets to do the deal. He dared them and they called his blood. They did. They just said, okay, okay, watch this route. Right. Second bombshell yesterday was of all the teams. I just didn't see Dallas coming. And I was like, wait a minute, the Mavericks. And at a glance, as much as I like Spencer Dinwiddie, because he's pretty good. He played there for five years. So they know exactly the Nets know exactly what he is. And when he was there with, with not a lot of Katie and Kyrie for that one year, that's nine through 20. Yeah. He averaged 22 and seven assists. Well, please. Oh, he's a bucket. He is respectable as an NBA player. Absolutely. And then you just mentioned Finney Smith as wings go. And I'm talking about two-way wings, offense, defense. He's pretty good. He's pretty good. And you, you like to have him on your team and Kevin Durant is said to really like him a lot. Right. Okay. So as good as those two are, and then you got another one of those distant future picks all the way out to 29. Then you got a second 27 and a second 29. But at a glance, I look at this and I say, Dallas just stole Kyrie Irving. They just stole him. He's Kyrie Irving. Yes. Any given night, you will have some highlight that you and I will sit back and say, there's nobody on earth who can do that. Unfortunately, nobody can finish at the rim like he can. Unfortunately, the highlights don't equate to dubs. They don't equate to winning big because they come here and they come there. And then unfortunately, as hard as I try to say, wait a second, Dallas stole Kyrie Irving. What exactly did they steal? Because I never know what you're going to get with him. Okay. So look at his track record. He was with LeBron. He did it a big shot that helped LeBron come back from three games to one day to win a championship. We got that right. And right away, pretty soon it took another year. Was it one more year after that? Yeah. They played together one more year. And Kyrie was completely out on LeBron because, according to a source very close to Kyrie who told me, Kyrie decided that LeBron was all about stats and not about winning. Right. That could really sum up Kyrie more than LeBron. You won more with LeBron than you ever won in your life. So he goes to Dan Gilbert and says, get me out of here. And Dan Gilbert's like, where do you want to go? Boston. Get me to Boston. Okay, I can do this. Right. I'm going to get you out of here because you helped me win a championship. And there you go to Boston. And we all thought, well, that's pretty good for Boston because it's Kyrie freaking Irving. And they got Jason Tatum and they have Jay LeBron and Marcus Mark. They were young, but they were there. Yes. And we thought Kyrie is the leader of this group. Well, he was the unleader. Yes. He led them under the bus. Right. He led the whole group right under the bus and they got run over by Kyrie in public conversation, right? In public comments. Right. And he flamed out and he quit on the Boston Celtics. Then he goes to the Nets and we don't have enough show to talk about all that went wrong with the Nets because not only was he constantly hurt and I'm never sure how hurt he is or if he just needed to take some time off. Right. And he would get hurt and just stay hurt for like endless days where you say, what's what's up with him? Right. I don't know. They don't hear from him. Right. And then we had the vaccination issue. And then we had the posting of the link to the movie based on a book that was very anti-Semitic. OK, we get in the suspension. Boom, boom, boom, boom. It was one thing after another. He wore out the front office of the Nets. I think he wore his team out. Yeah. They just don't know what's next. Are you all in or all out? Kyrie made it very clear that basketball was no longer his priority, that there are bigger things in the world. And we kept saying, well, go do them. But be our guest, because if you're that guy, if you if you have a greater calling in life, go chase some of these world problems. Hey, I guess. Right. Please. Yes. OK, well, that's that's who Dallas just, quote unquote, stole from the Nets. Right. I just don't know. And that's just on. We're looking globally at who is Kyrie or who is he not? I don't trust him and I don't think they can trust him. And I think that's the biggest thing. I think a lot of teams, Kyrie, is an unbelievable talent. But the reluctancy or the hesitancy that a lot of teams probably like, OK, yes, he's a phenomenal talent. Yeah. He's going to give us 27 points on a nightly basis. Yeah. He can go to 30, 40, 50 in a given night. But but is he going to always want to play basketball or is there going to be something else that all of a sudden, you know, I need to take this time off or I need to skip at the end of the day. Reliability, availability is important. It's it's the essence. And he's been he's been injury prone. Remember, he only played 20 games his first year. They messed this show up. Yeah. And he's had injuries here and there. And he took the time. I was like, bro, he didn't tell anybody that he was gone. And Sean Marks tried to come and say, well, he didn't. That's not what you said the first night when it first was reported. You said you didn't know anything about what Kyrie was doing. Then all of a sudden to try to save face to to make Kyrie not look too bad. Yeah. He's looking bad. Yeah. Oh, well, he told he shared it with me. Well, Steve, you didn't share it with your head coach because everybody was like, I don't know why everybody's looking around. So skip. I can understand the hesitancy. But Josiah, you gave I guess he gave a sigh of relief. Skip, he was never going to trade Kyrie where he wanted to go. It seems to me it's come out that the Lakers Kyrie wanted to go to the Lakers. Why would I do that? Man, you don't get along. So I'm not going to give I'm not going to reward you by you asking out and then I'm going to ship you to the Lakers. Right. Dan Gilbert rewarded him by shipping him into Boston. Go ahead. So skip. He's like, hold on. And he's like, Sean, the Lakers want him. Let's see what we can pry for him. It was reported. Sean's reporting that they did offer the two first round pick. They offer us this. They will not throw in Austin Reeves and Matt Christie. No, they're not going to do that. And then they basically say, here, you can take Dorian Finneyfield. You can take didn't wait at a first round pick at twenty nine and two seconds. That's not a better package than what they're rich. The Lakers originally offered. You get you get sure about Austin Reeves and you're sure about Max Christie. Are we sure about those? I'm not sure about what you get to unprotected. If you're going to wait that long. I mean, what are you the first round pick? Give me the twenty nine. I got it. What disqualifies that is Russell Westbrook. Right. In many ways, he's worse than Kyrie, not off the court, but on the court. He's less reliable on the court than Kyrie is off the court. Right. So it's it's hard. I know he's had his stretches, but, you know, he's fallen now back to dead last and three point shooting. So he's ranked one hundred and forty ninth and last in NBA three point shooting at twenty eight point six percent. It's so pathetic that it makes him a liability. But he still leads in turnovers for thirty six minutes. Well, what about what about if they were looking to buy him out? Yeah, but they want to be respectable. They want to have a glimmer of hope of a chance down the stretch. And I think they have a glimmer of hope. I can't. Yeah, but for them, when I mean, but you saw what it were. It was like plus 650. I think they had the third or the fourth best odds in the Eastern Conference. Now they'd like two thousand. They way, way on down there. But they're trying to keep Durant as happy as possible because the clock now ticks on. Are we about to hear from him with his latest trade demand? The difference is that we don't talk about this a little later. The difference is KD got three more years. Kyrie was going to walk this summer, you know, what can you go walk, walk into the office and ask for a trade because he can't go anywhere. We got three years, but you owe him three more. He does. And he signed that thinking that when he signed it, that James Harden and Kyrie were going to be there. Well, the joke's on you, Kevin, because the two you can't trust. I'm going on. Skip. How do all three players at some point time in the last 13 months ask for a trade? James Harden asked for one and got it. KD asked for one and didn't get it. Kyrie asked for one and he got it. What the hell is going on? Something's going on. Skip. I mean, I don't know if we've ever seen a situation like this. You cover the NBA for 40 years. Have you ever seen three superstar players ask for ask for a trade from the same organization within the span of almost a year? I have not. And yet Kyrie started off by saying, Kevin and I don't even need a coach. Yes. And they got rid of that coach. And I thought that was a good move because I thought Steve Nash was overmatched. I don't think he's a great head coach. He was very, he was a great basketball player. He cut his legs off in front of him from the jump. When you tell him he don't need you. No shot. No shot. I would agree. Okay. Now let's go back on the basketball court because I'm talking about Kyrie off, but on, he just had the luxury of playing with as efficient a great score as we've ever seen in the history of this league. Because as you know, KD can take 12 shots and get you 30 points. It's just how he does business. Correct. And it happens so quietly night after night that you come to take it for granted when you shouldn't because he's just pure efficiency. Right. Well, all of a sudden you're going from the luxury of playing with Kevin Durant to a guy who's just a tick behind Giannis for overall usage rate in Luka. Yeah. So I checked the usage rate last year with Jalen Brunson. Remember Dallas is in this predicament right now. They had to take the plunge for Kyrie because they tried poor Zingas. Right. And it was an epic fail and they had to get rid of him at last year's trade deadline. And then they didn't try Jalen Brunson this year. And that's looks like, I don't know if we can go epic, but we go fail, big fail. Okay. So now they're stuck where they have no choice but to plunge for Kyrie and just close their eyes and hope that Jason Kidd and that Nico Harrison, who's their GM, who dealt with Kyrie and his stepmom, who's now his agent for all those years at Nike. But unfortunately, Nike is now turned the other way from Kyrie over the post. And now I don't know if there's any lingering bad blood there. I have no idea. So I don't know that Jason Kidd and Nico can sort of harness what is the best in Kyrie because nobody else has been able to. And that's the thing, Skip. I mean, he was winning, going to, hold on. He won a championship, was going to NBA finals, and he wasn't happy. He wanted to be a leader. And then he realized leading is a lot harder than just saying, I'm a leader. Because what did he do, Skip? I got to show these guys in Boston how to win. They never won anything. They look around like, what did you win before LeBron? OK, now he goes to the Brooklyn Nets. Come on, KD. Come on with your boy. We got this thing. He's doing it up in the tunnel. They got two max contracts. Skip, this has been an epic fail for him and KD. That's epic. I'm talking about colossal, cataclysmic. Like all time. Yes. So what is it, Skip? At some point in time, the common denominator is it's got to be Kyrie. He wasn't happy with LeBron. He wasn't happy as the leader in Boston. He wasn't happy in Brooklyn. What is his happiness? What is his mecca, his heaven? What's going to make Kyrie happy? He was winning championships, going to NBA finals, and that didn't make him happy. He was the leader in Boston because they said he got these young guys, Tatum, Brown, Smart. Kyrie, he's won a championship. He come in and lead these guys. That didn't make him happy. He had co-sponsorship in what Brooklyn was doing. That didn't make him happy. When is he going to be happy? What is it going to take? How can you be happy when your co-star leads the league in dribbles? Because that's what he does. He's just going to dribble. Giannis leads in usage rate, but that's just time with the ball in your hands. But in dribbles, I don't even have the stat, but I guarantee you, Luka leads the league in dribbles because that's what he does. And you rave about his genius, baby bird, and now he's graduated. He might be Larry Bird. So the point is that there's so much dribbling going on. Is Kyrie going to be happy? Because the way they have played offense, and last year they played it successfully because they played very good defense. They ended up last year ranked seventh in defense. You just got it. And you've also fallen this year to 24th in defense. That's why they're barely above 500. So what happens? What does the It's Luka. Luka one-on-one or one-on-two. And if you do like one-on-three and you just dare him, he will jump pass and skip pass it over to open shooters. And they did keep hardaway, which was a good move because he can make them. And he just needs snipers. Well, does Kyrie want to devolve into, I'm just a sniper for Luka? Like a catch and shoot three-point shooter? He can catch and shoot, but he needs the ball. He needs to be able to dance. Put the ball, get to the mid-range, or finish, go to the rim. So with Luka having the ball, I mean, there's only so many minutes in the game. There's only so many dribbles in the game. And Luka has the lion's share of the ball in his hand for the minute. So what? Kyrie, so you look at last year, down the stretch after they traded Christophe Porzingis. What happened with Jalen Brunson and Luka in shots per game? Luka went up a tick to about 23 shots a game. And Jalen had 13 shots a game. Well, that's your niche. No, Kyrie need more than 13 shots. Okay, well, I'm just saying that was the niche that Jalen Brunson carved out and got himself a great deal off that niche because people could see. Seems like a bargain now. Well, it does. I'm sorry, the Knicks said, if we expand that sample size from 13 shots to 20-some shots, we might have something. We might have an all-star. And they do have something. But again, when you look at, okay, in the West, you got to guard Kawhi and Paul George, and Brooke, and Murray, and Morant, and Fox. Boy, do you. You better. Or you're going to be right back to square one. Exactly. And I just, I understand the Nets position that they were in, Skip. It's like, at least we got something because he's going to walk kind of like what KD did to OKC. Skip, he won't. If he, just think what they could have got for Kevin Durant. If you got that for Rudy Gobert, just imagine five, six years ago, what you could have gotten for Kevin Durant. What? Fixed first-round pick? Unprotected? Pick-swap? And a couple of players. Yep. Okay. So, remember, Dallas is just experimenting here. And if they don't like what they see, if it blows up, they'll say, okay, so we wasted Dinwiddie and Finney Smith. And for some kid that's in the sixth grade. Right. That's what I'm saying. But they'll just say, next. And they'll let him walk. So, your Lakers might have a shot, depending on if this flames out or not, they might have a free agent shot at Kyrie where you don't have to give up anything. And there'd be no more Russ, obviously, so you'd have a slot. But it's also reported that the Lakers wanted to tie it to LeBron two years. Okay. Well, Kyrie's like, I don't want to do two years. I want the full four years, 198, basically $50 million a year. Yeah, it's $200 million. That's what it is. He wants the equivalent of Max Deal. But you could, Skip, I don't understand how anyone can't see the reluctance of any team wanting to sign Kyrie long-term, given his history, just forget what happened before LeBron got to Cleveland, because we don't really know there wasn't a whole lot going on. They weren't winning, so nobody gave a damn what was going on in Cleveland. Good point. But once LeBron returned and we saw the inner workings, how the guy went months without speaking in the playoffs to his teammates. And we see what has transpired in Cleveland and Brooklyn and in Boston. You don't understand the hesitancy. And by the way, I want to compliment you on a point you used to throw back at me. Yeah. And I couldn't argue out of it was, what was Kyrie doing before LeBron got there? Yes. Was it three years? Yeah. Was it three or four? Well, he went to Cleveland. Didn't he go to Cleveland a year after LeBron? Nah, maybe two years after LeBron, because he was the number one overall pick. Yeah. So they had to be really bad. Right. Yeah, for three years. So he was there for three years and they did nothing. Nothing. And so you should question. Right. Wait a second. He was so good coming out of school that he did nothing. Right. They didn't win a national championship. No, because obviously now I'm going to the highest level or MJ or whoever. They come out of college and are not LeBron, but MJ, obviously. And right away you see, oh, yeah, Kevin Dren. Oh, oh, you can see. Oh, he's changing life. Right. For the Oklahoma City Thunder. Right. Well, guess what? Kyrie was there and they got the lottery. They got number one overall pick. They got and they got Tristan Thompson. That is correct. So what's his legs? What has he done exactly? Except hit one big shot in a game seven. Yep. He worked really well when he has a de facto true number one. We play with Kevin Durant. He played with LeBron. OK, Lucas, that guy. Now the question, because he sees himself on the level. He does. He started to see himself on the level with LeBron. He said it. I got a guy look down to the bench and I got just like I can. He sees himself on that level. He sees himself on the. So he's not going to take a backseat to Luka. Not in his head. Jason Kidd may have some. It's going to be an interesting experiment. Yes, that's what it is. An experiment quickly. Caught a lot of people by surprise this weekend. Yes. All right. Thanks for watching undisputed fans. Subscribe here to get the latest from Skip and Shannon. Plus go watch a few segments from our other shows on FS1.