Woj: Los Angeles Clippers Have Made Offer to Cavs for Irving
By Noah Shatzer
The stunning news of Kyrie Irving’s trade request has sent front offices around the league scrambling to find a way to acquire the young point guard. The LA Clippers have reportedly made an offer.
Per an article by ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski, the LA Clippers are one of the several teams that have made trade offers for Kyrie Irving to the Cleveland Cavaliers.
In addition to the Clippers, the San Antonio Spurs, Phoenix Suns, Minnesota Timberwolves, New York Knicks, and Miami Heat have all made legitimate trade offers with many other teams around the league kicking the tires on a deal but not making legitimate offers.
League sources told ESPN that the Cavs are looking for a deal that resembles the 2011 trade between the Denver Nuggets and New York Knicks that sent Anthony to the Big Apple in return for young players, win-now veterans, and draft picks.
If this is the case, what could the Clippers have offered to the Cavs that wouldn’t leave the team completely devoid of depth?
A deal bringing Irving to the Clippers would have to center around DeAndre Jordan, who is one of the only veterans on the roster that LA would be able to part ways with.
The players that were acquired in the Chris Paul trade with Houston, Sam Dekker, Lou Williams, Patrick Beverley, and Montrezl Harrell can’t be packaged in a trade until August 27th, two months after the initial trade. In addition to that, new free agents can’t be traded until December 15th.
This rules out most of the LA Clippers’ roster in a trade with the Cavs, leaving DeAndre Jordan, Austin Rivers, Wesley Johnson, and Brice Johnson as the only movable players on the roster.
If the Cavs are trying to trade Irving before training camp, they’re looking for a deal that can get done right away, not one that they have to wait for pieces to become available.
The only realistic deal that LA could offer at the moment would be something along the lines of this:
While this would be a solid trade for LA that keeps most of the team’s new depth, it should easily be beaten by the offers of other teams.
The Cavs don’t really need a center with Tristan Thompson on the roster and Cleveland seems to want to acquire another quality point guard in return for Irving, which Rivers is not (he’s a shooting guard people).
Not getting Irving isn’t the end of the world, the Clippers have put together a roster that should be both fun to watch and successful in the upcoming season and should be just fine without him.