The eight-time NBA All-Star will not be a Laker.
Your Los Angeles Lakers may have just dodged a bullet!
Brooklyn Nets All-Star point guard Kyrie Irving blew up the NBA’s trade deadline week Friday when he demanded to be dealt away from a 31-21 club expected to contend for the title after contract extension talks melted down.
The Lakers were widely considered one of the favorites to land him if Brooklyn did indeed cave and flip him by Thursday’s deadline. Instead, it was their probable co-favorites, the Dallas Mavericks, who got a deal done.
Shams Charania of The Athletic reports that the Brooklyn Nets are sending Irving and former Lakers power forward Markieff Morris to the Mavericks in exchange for an unprotected 2029 first-round draft pick, second-rounders in 2027 and 2029, point guard Spencer Dinwiddie, and swingman Dorian Finney-Smith.
The Mavericks had more role-playing depth to help Brooklyn at least field a competent playoff-caliber roster around All-NBA power forward Kevin Durant in the immediate future than the Lakers would have been able to offer. One wonders if LA could have trumped this offer by tendering both its future first-round picks, in 2027 and 2029, unprotected and three second-rounders. It would still have lacked the kind of present-day health Dinwiddie and Finney-Smith can provide Durant, given that the expiring $47.1 million deal of Russell Westbrook would have needed to be the monetary centerpiece of a trade, though its draft haul in this hypothetical scenario would have been better.
