Kyrie to Boston—Does It Mean All That Much

Since this is a basketball site ‘somewhat’, maybe I should write something on this since there’s nothing else NBA related to write about in late August which compares with Caligula and the Russians.

Kyrie got his wish and was traded away from LeBron on Tuesday. Kyrie will now be a Boston Celtic. In return, Isaiah Thomas and Jae Crowder will now be with LeBron in Cleveland. Additionally, the Cavs get the 2018 New Jersey draft pick which very well could turn out to be the No. 1 pick in the draft.

Is this a game changer for either team? I don’t think so. Cleveland will still be the team to beat in the East this season. Boston will be the second best team in the East. But more importantly, neither team has done anything which will make them good enough to beat the Golden State Warriors.

This isn’t complicated. Golden State’s four best players are Durant, Curry, Thompson, and Green. Cleveland’s best four players are LeBron, Thomas, Kevin Love, and Tristan Thompson. Boston’s four best players are Kyrie, Gordon Hayward, Al Horford, and someone else. Oklahoma City’s four best players are Russell Westbrook, Paul George, Steven Adams, and someone else.

My point being, Cleveland, OKC, and Boston are three of the better teams in the league minus Golden State, but unless one of these three teams adds another difference maker I see Kevin Durant for the second year in row being able to win a ring and subsequently tell Donald Trump to go to hell.

OKC needs another scorer. Boston needs a stud hoss on the boards. Cleveland needs more consistent outside scoring. Maybe if you took the best ten players from Cleveland, OKC, and Boston and put them together you could hang with these Warriors in a best four of seven. Maybe. The best four from that team would be LeBron, Westbrook, Paul George, and I guess Kyrie. You’d fill out the top ten with Horford, Hayward, Sixth man Isaiah Thomas, Westbrook’s UCLA bud Kevin Love, Steven Adams, Tristan Thompson, and I’ll go Jae Crowder because you’d need him against the Warriors. Kawhi Leonard would be nice to have as well. Give me those eleven guys and I’ll go play the Warriors. Give me a best four of LeBron, Westbrook, Leonard, and Paul George and we’d have something worth watching next June.

So in the end, did all that much happen on Tuesday in the NBA?

I don’t think so.

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