Lakers win by losing out; Nash a winner too
by Paul Teetor
What LeBron James wants LeBron usually gets.
But not this time.
LeBron wanted the Lakers to trade for Kyrie Irving.
And Irving wanted to come to the Lakers for a reunion with LeBron.
It was all set up for the Lakers, until the news broke Sunday afternoon that there was a blockbuster NBA trade: the Brooklyn Nets sent problem child Kyrie to the Dallas Mavericks in exchange for Spencer Dinwiddie, Dorian Finney-Smith and three draft picks.
The big winners in the trade: the Lakers, who were under intense pressure from LeBron to reunite him with Kyrie.
The Lakers offered everything they had available for Kyrie, and still couldn’t close the deal. That makes them winners by default, since they lost out because the Nets owner, billionaire Joe Tsai, hates the Lakers and didn’t want to send him here.
The smart move by Tsai would have been to approve sending him here and then laughing every day as Kyrie destroyed yet another team. But he’s a businessman, not a hoops guy, so that kind of strategic chess move was beyond him.
Of course, Mavericks owner Mark Cuban is supposed to be a genius businessman, too – check out his smug, arrogant performance every week on Shark Tank. But he again proved he’s clueless when it comes to basketball.
Cuban is the guy who refused to approve a long-term contract for Steve Nash 20 years ago. So Nash signed with Phoenix, won two MVP awards, and established himself as a first-ballot Hall of Famer.
Which brings us to the other big winner in this trade: Manhattan Beach’s own Steve Nash.
Brooklyn dumping Kyrie five days before Thursday’s trade deadline was proof positive that
Nash was not the problem with the Brooklyn Nets over the last three seasons.
When Nash was fired as the Nets coach seven games into this season, there was a rush to condemn him for the team’s inability to reach its potential. After all, they had a top-5 player in Kevin Durant, a top-20 player in Kyrie Irving, and another future hall of Famer in James Harden. Indeed, the team was so stacked that Kyrie said before their first season together that they didn’t need a coach, that they could coach themselves.
All Nash had to do, the pundits said, was roll the basketballs out at practice and call timeouts during games.
Of course, it proved a lot more complicated than that, and they only won one playoff series in all that time and never came close to even reaching the NBA Finals, much less winning a championship.
The criticism of Nash seemed to be vindicated when the Nets turned it around under new coach Jacque Vaughn back in November and went on a long winning streak after Nash left. But behind the scenes Kyrie was working hard to destroy the team, privately demanding that they give him a four-year, $200 million extension.
Owner Joe Tsai and General Manager Sean Marks were so fed up after more than three years of watching Kyrie’s craziness – missing almost an entire season because he refused to get vaccinated, posting a link to an antisemitic film, taking a week off in January 2021 because he claimed to be “triggered” by the Donald Trump capitol insurrection – that they refused to offer the extension.
So last Friday Kyrie publicly issued a trade demand and within 48 hours he was gone.
Finally, the smart guys who cover the NBA day in and day out were forced to admit what All Ball has been saying since last fall: Nash was not the problem in Brooklyn. Kyrie was the problem — and the guys who brought him to Brooklyn were the real architects of the dysfunctional, toxic mess the team had become. Of course, Tsai and Marks were forced to accept Kyrie because Durant made it a condition of signing with them.
Nash had the one essential ingredient necessary for success by a modern NBA coach: credibility in the locker room. Today’s players had grown up watching Nash perform his magic with Phoenix, and they knew he was one of the smartest, most accomplished and most skilled players ever to put on a uniform.
If Nash ever has any desire again to coach in the NBA, his prospects have improved dramatically in the last 24 hours.
The big losers in the trade: the Mavericks, who will now have to figure out how ball hog Kyrie fits alongside 23-year-old superstar Luke Doncic, one of the top three players in the league, but also the most ball-dominant player in the league.
Kyrie said Monday that he is ecstatic to be with Dallas now. Of course, he said he was excited to be in Cleveland with LeBron, until he demanded a trade out of there.
Then he said he was excited to be in Boston, even promising the fans publicly that he would re-sign with the Celtics. Until he reneged and signed with Brooklyn as part of a package with Durant.
Having blown up three teams, Kyrie is now targeting the Mavs for his unique brand of athletic arson.
So where does all this maneuvering leave the Lakers? After all, they caved into LeBron’s latest demand that they include the 2027 and 2029 first round draft picks in their offer to Brooklyn and still couldn’t complete the deal.
With three days to go before the trade deadline, they’re empty handed in terms of getting LeBron significant help to lift them out of 13th place in the Western Conference.
That leaves them waiting for LeBron to break Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s career scoring record. He needs 36 points to pass the former Lakers great record of 38,387. Since LeBron is averaging 30 points a game this season – an incredible feat for a 38-year-old guy in his 20th season – it looks like he will break the record in Thursday night’s home game against Milwaukee.
But knowing LeBron’s sense of drama and his own place in sports history, don’t be surprised if he breaks it Tuesday night when the Lakers host Oklahoma City – probably on a last-second, buzzer-beating three-point game winner.
Unfortunately, once the sugar high of that historic moment passes, the Lakers and LeBron are likely to look at each other and sing a reprise of that old Peggy Lee song: Is that all There is?
Contact: teetor.paul@gmail.com. Follow: @paulteetor. ER