Scott Stinson: Kyrie Irving’s failed power play shows player empowerment has its limits


Having been allowed to seek his own deal, Irving discovered that contending teams were not lining up to part with good assets in return for his services

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Brooklyn Nets star Kyrie Irving has infamously had a poor understanding of a few things: the curvature of the Earth, the efficacy of vaccines and, now, the concept of leverage.

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Irving, the seven-time All-Star point guard, has had three forgettable seasons in Brooklyn. Forgettable in a basketball sense, that is, but spectacular for off-the-court reasons. He played just 29 games last season after refusing to be vaccinated against COVID-19, which meant he couldn’t comply with vaccine mandates in NBA cities including New York. For a time the Nets wanted him to stay away entirely, but they eventually let him play road games because their season was falling apart after an injury to Kevin Durant. He was good in this limited role, and was nothing if not well rested, but the Nets went out of the playoffs in a first-round sweep to the Boston Celtics.

After this, and three seasons in which he appeared in 103 of Brooklyn’s 226 regular-season games, Irving expected to get paid. He had a player option for 2022-23 that he could pick up for US$36.5-million, but he wanted something closer to five years and US$250-million.

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This was, in a word, insane. Even in an NBA where stars overwhelmingly get their way because there aren’t nearly enough of them to go around, the Brooklyn front office wanted no part of a long-term deal. Irving had demonstrated the opposite of commitment. It was as though one party in a romantic relationship had an affair with someone else, and then asked the original partner if they wanted to buy a house together. Maybe let’s see how the next season shakes out first, Kyrie.

Undeterred, Irving is said to have sought and received permission to seek a sign-and-trade deal — the kind of arrangement where Team X would agree to the mega-contract that he wanted, and would give some assets to the Nets to grease the wheels. A free-agent signing that is not exactly a free-agent signing. You can see where he was going with this line of thinking. He’s a three-time All-NBA player and hit one of the biggest shots in league history, the three pointer that won Cleveland the 2016 title. He forced his way out of Cleveland, was hotly pursued when he decided to leave Boston as a free agent, and at 30 years old still potentially has several elite years ahead of him. Wouldn’t he be a hot commodity?

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Except the Player Empowerment Era, it would seem, has its limits. Hilariously, Irving first gave the Nets a list of preferred destinations, which included Miami, Philadelphia and the two L.A. teams. None of those teams had any salary-cap space; he might as well have asked to be traded to the moon. (Assuming he believes the moon exists.) Having then been allowed to seek his own deal, Irving further discovered that contending teams were not lining up to part with good assets in return for his services. His only real option was to decline the option with Brooklyn and join LeBron James and the Lakers — that would be the same LeBron he once spurned in Cleveland — for a salary of $US6-million. For all of his inscrutability, Irving was not going to turn US$36-million into one-sixth of that.

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And so, despite his evident willingness, perhaps even desire, to leave, Irving has now decided that the player option doesn’t look so bad after all. He gave an extremely on-brand quote to The Athletic, which is to say a weird one — “Normal people keep the world going, but those who dare to be different lead us into tomorrow” — and then positioned his return as having done the Nets a favour by declining to accept any of the alleged offers from competing teams, none of which have yet to be identified.

It was, in the end, a disastrous attempt at a power play. Irving’s camp even tried to leverage his relationship with Durant, with The Athletic reporting last week that Durant was “considering” his future with the Nets, a not-at-all-subtle leak that suggested the Nets’ inability to pay Irving what he wanted could cost them the crown jewel who had come to Brooklyn with him in a package deal.

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The Nets, to their credit, did not waver. Irving had two choices: pick up the player option, or become a free agent in a market that was clearly cool to him. Durant, if he really was considering anything, had even fewer options. He’s under contract with Brooklyn for four years at US$192-million. Even if the Nets did want to blow the whole thing up and start over, moving that kind of salary is nearly impossible under NBA rules. There is also the complicating factor that the Nets have, for years now, tried to establish themselves as a real rival in New York, which remains very much a Knicks town. Landing Durant and Irving three years ago was a signal that the Nets could be one of the NBA’s few destination franchises. Becoming Oklahoma City East so soon after their arrival would be an admission of defeat.

Brooklyn held fast, and both their stars remain. For now, anyway.

• Email: sstinson@postmedia.com | Twitter:

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