Trade & FA 2023-24: Stein-Ingram Trade Inevitable| LAL Want Lebron Back On Any Terms

[SleepingHero]

At this point team success with Kyrie is purely assumed. Because the evidence is we had more success without him. Now I'm not saying Kyrie makes this team worse, but IMO a lot of what Kyrie does offensively is at least partially offset by the disadvantage of a small 6'2 guard defensively, and it has knock on effects. He also has off court issues that you simply can't ignore. We lock ourselves into a long term deal with Kyrie at our absolute peril IMO, his history is clear cut, the FO can think what they want, but the above comments give me hope they aren't going into the negotiations with absolute blinders on thinking that it's Kyrie or bust, because it simply isn't, and a WCF without him should at least be a partial indication of that.

Honestly incredible points but I do want to suggest that I think you're underrating Kyrie's offense.

Kyrie as a 6'2 guard has been one of the most efficient offensive players of all time. In fact, running a Kyrie Irving iso play has been the 12th most efficient play of the last 15 years. This year he had 247 possessions and a whopping 1.28ppp on isolations. If he qualified for possessions it'd be just behind a Steph offball screen with KD on his team.

https://twitter.com/CrumpledJumper/statu...15617?s=20

That kind of offensive firepower has never been on our team. Even Brunson at his peak this year hasn't come close (1.10ppp). 

Just framing Kyrie's offensive brilliance. I do agree giving him an extension would be a perilous endeavor and his reputation precedes him. Where I diverge is if the Mavs fail to turn Kyrie into 2-3 rotation players, then they're pretty F'd. I'd rather they negotiate from a position of leverage, get Kyrie on a ~40 mil deal, and see how it works out. If it works then they're in the green and they just have to pray Kyrie doesn't be Kyrie. If it doesn't then they can flip him to the highest bidder.