Los Angeles Clippers head coach Tyronn Lue led Kyrie Irving to a championship as head coach of the 2016 Cleveland Cavaliers.
Now, it’s Irving who’ll seemingly stand in-between Lue and one other championship now that he’s been traded out West.
The Nets made official the Irving cope with the Dallas Mavericks that despatched the All-Star starter southwest in alternate for ex-Net Spencer Dinwiddie, 3-and-D ahead Dorian Finney-Smith, a 2029 first-round choose and a pair of second-round picks.
Lue’s Clippers play the Mavericks on Wednesday, and Irving, offered he passes a bodily, is anticipated to be accessible and make his Dallas debut towards his former head coach.
Right alongside MVP candidate Luka Doncic, giving the Mavericks one of many extra reared scoring duos in all of basketball.
“Don’t make me think about it right now, please,” Lue mentioned with a smile forward of tip-off towards the Nets on Monday. “There’s gonna be a tricky problem. Kyrie’s a man we’ve all the time blitzed previously. Luka’s all the time the man we’ve blitzed previously, and now you’ve acquired two of them.
“It’s gonna be a tough challenge for a lot of teams in the West.”
Lue opted to not get into the small print of the controversies that plagued the Nets throughout Irving’s time in Brooklyn.
Irving appeared in solely 143 of 288 potential common season video games throughout his three and a half seasons in Brooklyn. He missed video games for numerous non-basketball associated causes, together with “personal reasons” that stored him out two weeks after the Jan. 6, 2021 riot in Washington, D.C.; his resolution to not get vaccinated towards COVID-19, which price him nearly half of the 2021-22 season; and his resolution to put up the hyperlink to a movie containing antisemitic themes on each his Twitter and Instagram feeds.
“I just want what’s best for him, whatever’s good for him,” Lue mentioned. “All the other stuff, I can’t control that. But from a personal standpoint, I just want him to be in a place where he’s happy.”
Lue additionally pushed again towards the thought he’s the so-called Irving whisperer, regardless that he’s certainly one of few NBA coaches to efficiently preserve the embattled celebrity guard drama-free and locked in on basketball.
“I just think I formed a relationship with Kyrie. … So it was everybody. We just had a tight-knit group that we all were together, and so I don’t know about getting the best out of him,” Lue mentioned. “Wherever he’s performed, he’s produced and truly had higher numbers [than in Cleveland], however we did have a core three guys with Kevin Love, LeBron [James] and Kyrie that each one — Kyrie and LeBron averaged over 25, Ok-Love averaged 20, so simply having the ability to play with two different nice gamers and likewise rating your factors and get your assists.
“That’s one thing he had to learn because before LeBron and Kevin got there, it was his show only and it was hard on him. Teams were double teaming him, triple teaming him, and now [during the Big 3 era in Cleveland], he’s got to a situation where he actually can play to win a championship and compete in the Finals every year, and things are gonna be different because you have two other guys you can lean when things get hard. So that was a great position for him to be in especially at a younger age.”
Lue mentioned he wasn’t stunned at Irving’s commerce request. Irving additionally requested a commerce from the Cleveland Cavaliers in 2017.
“I think the whole league is crazy. The whole league, you never know what’s gonna happen,” he mentioned. “But I know Kyrie, he’s a baller; whoever gets him, he’s a talent, you know? And so — like I always talked about — he doesn’t have an offensive weakness. He can post, he can finish left or right hand, shoot off the dribble, left, right, midrange, threes. I mean, he’s a huge talent. And so Dallas has to be very ecstatic getting him. Then putting a guy like Kyrie in our conference, so I don’t like that. But, you know, whatever is best for Ky, I’m happy for, like I said, because we have a relationship back in 2016, which was great for us.”
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Source: www.bostonherald.com