How will the Cleveland Cavaliers handle Kyrie Irving's shocking trade request?
After a relatively quiet summer in terms of player transactions, a new Cleveland front office headed by former assistant GM Koby Altman -- who will be promoted to full-time GM to replace the departed David Griffin, ESPN's Adrian Wojnarowski reported Friday -- suddenly faces a complex decision that will shape the franchise's short- and long-term future.
So what are the Cavaliers' options? Let's take a look, along with my stab at the likelihood for each option.
Trade Irving for primarily present value: 60 percent
Dealing Irving for other veteran players is the default path, and in my assessment it's the most likely one despite how difficult it would be for the Cavaliers to win such a trade, as I laid out Friday.
The timing of Irving's request going public adds to the challenge, presuming Cleveland wants to replace him with another primary ball handler. Free agents who signed this summer aren't eligible to be traded now; the Cavaliers would have to wait until Dec. 15, which doesn't seem feasible. By now, several teams have already filled their need for a point guard, most notably the Minnesota Timberwolves -- one of the four teams to which Irving reportedly told Cleveland he'd like to be traded.
More than that, the fundamental challenge for the Cavaliers is that a team with a point guard good enough to credibly replace Irving is also unlikely to trade that player for Irving. To win a trade for future value, the front office will probably have to get creative.
Cleveland's trade options increase if the team is willing to consider making LeBron James a primary ball handler and dealing Irving for a package headlined by a wing player. That's the only realistic scenario that lands Irving in Minnesota, for example, with Andrew Wiggins coming back to the team that drafted him No. 1 overall before trading him to the Timberwolves as part of the deal for Kevin Love.
Multi-team deals could also give the Cavaliers a way to thread the needle of getting Irving to one of his desired destinations while also supplying the Cavs with the veterans they need to win now. If the New York Knicks could figure out an appropriate return to send the Phoenix Suns for Eric Bledsoe -- presumably centered around lottery pick Frank Ntilikina -- a package of Bledsoe and Carmelo Anthony offers Cleveland enough depth to potentially make up for the downgrade at point guard. But beware that adding additional teams to a trade makes it exponentially more difficult to complete.
Trade Irving for primarily future value: 5 percent
The Cavaliers surely have a better chance of getting equal value in return for Irving if they trade him for young players and future draft picks. That opens up the pool of teams capable of trading for Irving to include those that don't have a point guard or wing with equivalent value, and could help Cleveland start to prepare for a future without James if he departs as a free agent next summer.
That noted, few of the Cavaliers' recent moves have indicated a focus on their long-term future. Cleveland's offseason has included signing point guard Jose Calderon, soon to be 36, and 31-year-old forward Jeff Green, and re-signing 36-year-old wing Kyle Korver. Dating back to the Wiggins trade, the Cavaliers have used nearly everything of value on their roster (including young players and draft picks) in an effort to win now. I doubt the possibility of James departing will cause them to reverse path.
If anything, now may be the time to double down on a win-now strategy to maximize the chances of winning a second championship while James is in Cleveland. While that would hurt the Cavaliers' timeline for rebuilding if he departs, no move they make now is likely to result in championship contention without James. So the most realistic scenario for an Irving trade helping Cleveland's long-term outlook is if the team gets both a veteran replacement and a draft pick from a team like the Boston Celtics.
Trade LeBron James, keep Irving: <1 percent
So if Irving's trade request sprang from a desire to play a larger role, and James might leave in free agency next summer, shouldn't the Cavaliers just trade James now and keep Irving?
As logical as that conclusion sounds, there are a few problems. The first is James' no-trade clause, which would allow him to pick a destination and limit Cleveland's options. When you consider that few teams would want to surrender their most valuable players and draft picks for an impending free agent, a James trade would offer a more extreme version of the conditions that prevented the Indiana Pacers from getting equal value in return for Paul George.
Above and beyond that, there's no guarantee that an Irving-led Cavaliers team would be particularly good. While Irving was younger then, Cleveland was better at winning the NBA draft lottery than games before James' return. And the Cavaliers have continued to struggle with Irving as their star in games that James has missed over the past three seasons, going 3-13. Irving would have more help from the players or picks a James trade returned, but Cleveland still couldn't expect to contend with Irving as the centerpiece of the roster.
Add it up, and I'd be stunned if the Cavaliers traded James.
Keep Irving: 35 percent
The one outcome that hasn't gotten much attention as fans and media alike rush to the ESPN trade machine is the possibility that Cleveland will do nothing. There's no credible threat behind Irving's trade request.
Holdouts aren't a real possibility for NBA players under contract. (Don't confuse those with free agents who remain unsigned into training camp, as Cavaliers teammates JR Smith and Tristan Thompson have in recent years.) And Irving has two years left on his contract before he can decline his 2019-20 player option and become an unrestricted free agent, so there's no particular urgency for Cleveland to recoup value now.
The likelihood of the Cavaliers keeping Irving is difficult to estimate from afar because it depends primarily on how much his trade request -- and his stated desire to no longer play with James -- has frayed his relationship with James and the organization. But given the infeasibility of trading James, keeping Irving and hoping to mend fences is Cleveland's best alternative if there isn't a favorable Irving trade to be made.
Sometimes the best move an NBA team can make is no move at all. That might be the case for the Cavaliers with Irving.