The Kyrie Irving Mega Deal

The NBA has transformed into a new beast in the last few years. Once the Warriors put a name for themselves on the map and LeBron was forced to rally the troops in Cleveland, there has been non-stop competition to garner has much talent and assets as possible to allow your team even a shot at competing with these two teams. This last offseason was a fantasy NBA dream with a number of different all-stars switching teams and putting their talent together to try to take down the Cavs and Dubs. The one trade that has the biggest effect on the entire league has to be the Kyrie Irving deal. If you haven’t heard Irving was traded from the Cleveland Cavaliers to the Boston Celtics after rumor surfaced that Irving was apparently unhappy playing second fiddle to LeBron James. That put the NBA in a whirlwind with the possibilities that a player with this much talent, postseason experience, all while being in his prime in now up for grabs and wants to get away from a team that has made it to the Championship for the last three seasons. Without going into too much detail of why this trade happened, let’s talk about what happened. This trade is going to completely change the landscape of the daily fantasy basketball research as so many of the Celtics moves shifted big time talents to different teams. So in exchange for getting the great Kyrie Irving, the Boston Celtics gave up: scoring champ Isaiah Thomas, all-star caliber wing-man Jae Crowder, euro prospect Ante Zizic, 2018 first round draft pick, and 2020 second round draft pick. At first glance, I think the Cavs got the better end of the deal but there are plenty of ways to look at this deal. First, Irving clearly wasn’t going to want to play with LeBron so they had to somewhat sell low on his amazing talent. Second, Isaiah Thomas is recovering from a hip injury that will set him back a couple of months and may end up missing some of the regular season and is also set to become a free agent at the end of the season. Put that into perspective and it is easy to see why the Celtics would be willing to engage into that type of deal. Take a look at their starting lineup and they look a daily fantasy basketball nightmare in trying to pick which player will carry the team that night. They have: Kyrie, Al Horford, Gordon Hayward, Marcus Smart, and two rising superstar youngsters in Jaylen Brown and Jayson Taytum. Look for the Celtics to come compete and possibly take down the Cavs for the Eastern Conference title this year.