Report: Celtics 'would have been willing' to trade Kyrie for Kemba during the past two years

If true, this is a very interesting revelation. The article is a few months old now, but I don't remember seeing it here....

https://www.nbcsports.com/boston/celtics/report-celtics-would-have-been-willing-trade-kyrie-kemba-during-past-two-years


The Boston Celtics will be having a changing of the guard at point guard once again, as it appears that Kemba Walker will join the team in free agency. The former UConn star and eight-year member of the Charlotte Hornets will ink a max deal with the Celtics and the 29-year-old will hope to bring some stability to a team that appeared to be suffering major losses this offseason.

One of the major losses in question was Kyrie Irving. The two-year Celtic, who had been acquired in a trade with the Cleveland Cavaliers during the 2017 offseason, is planning on leaving the Celtics to sign a max deal with the Brooklyn Nets. And while Irving has a high-level of talent, it may be a move that ends up working out for the Celtics. And, in fact, they may have considered Walker to be a better fit with the team all along.

According to Steve Bulpett of The Boston Herald, the Celtics reportedly would have been willing to trade Irving for Walker over the course of the past couple years. Here's what Bulpett said of that possibility in a recent piece.

One league exec who’s dealt with the Celtics even went as far as to tell the Herald he knows for a fact the club would have been willing to trade Irving for Walker during the past two years. If he’s right, it would indicate the Celts knew there were issues with Irving’s approach to leadership and general ability to help cool the fires of young players whose image might have surpassed their actual abilities following the 2018 conference finals run.

It's impossible to know whether or not this is actually true, but the fact of the matter is that a trade didn't happen. That could have partially been due to the difference in salary between the two players (Irving was on a $20 million per year deal, Walker was making a mere $12 million annually) but also, Walker had been the face of the Charlotte Hornets' franchise since 2011. So, trading him in a like-for-like swap given his extremely team-friendly contract wouldn't have made much sense for the Hornets.

Still, the point here is that the Celtics may have had some inklings that Irving wasn't the right fit for the Celtics. We'll soon see if Walker ends up being a better leader who can help the squad mesh, but after a season in which the team failed to live up to expectations, the change is welcome.

"But I didn't know until this day that it was Barzini all along.”


Are we to believe they wanted Walker all along, 


the past couple years?



This season began with high expectations.  A healthy GH and Irving with 2 young studs was championship level hype.  Boston wanted Irving as long as Davis was in the mix.  First Kyrie went South and then Davis announced that Boston was not on his list.

The timeline does not go back to the past couple of years.

Nevertheless Walker should work out and the bonding going on with him, JB, MS and JT is a jump start on establishing chemistry.   It is a most unusual opportunity.  I cannot recall (4) players from the same team making the roster of one of our USA teams.  

The chance to connect with coach Pop is huge.

The one thing I do believe is that Danny Ainge had an inkling from the last half of the first year of Kyrie tenure here, that there were issues that seemed to be beyond help. I wish he had made the move and traded Kyrie. He had the control to do this, what stopped him?

l. Admitting he made a mistake in bringing Kyrie here??
2. Admitting that IT was more of a leader?
3. Hoping that this team would turn the corner and behave up to
the talent he believed they had?
4. Hoping Kyrie would wake up:

It was obvious from the late fall, early winter on that Kyrie was unhappy. The way he turned
on fellow playsl
Whatever the reason, there was no pot at the end of this rainbow and the Celtics allowed this
major talent to walk away laughing. This should never have happened. But......it did and we still ended up with a terrific point guard.

Kyrie's story will be the black mark in Celtic history forever. A guy like that walking away from a major team like the Celtics is awful, but having Kemba walk in is a better story

Rosalie

The team is much better off not just because Kyrie is gone.  They are better off because the roster has been paired down to fewer starting level guys who expect minutes.  That in my opinion was the cause of chemistry issues last year.

This was just a blimp on the screen of Celtics history.   It's no stain on the franchise.  It has already been bleached out.

dboss wrote:Rosalie

The team is much better off not just because Kyrie is gone.  They are better off because the roster has been paired down to fewer starting level guys who expect minutes.  That in my opinion was the cause of chemistry issues last year.

This was just a blimp on the screen of Celtics history.   It's no stain on the franchise.  It has already been bleached out.

Agreed guy hits a series clinching shot, then thinks he gods gift to the world, was getting tired of watching him hog the ball....all the time.

Cow It is funny that you said that Kyrie was a ball hog. I have a wonderful heart doctor who knows hardly anything about basketball, but when I go to him he always asks me about how I feel about the team and what I think they will accomplish. I just saw him last week. He told me he went to ONE basketball game last year and he didn't enjoy watching "that guy" hog the ball all the time. "They won't miss him, will they?" he asked me. "he seemed to always want the ball" I laughed, here is a guy who doesn't know anything and saw what we saw with his untrained eyes.

He made me laugh! I swear he was proud of himself because he knew about "this team" I always talk about to him. Funny, we are not alone.

RosalieTCeltics wrote:Cow  It is funny that you said that Kyrie was a ball hog.  I have a wonderful heart doctor who knows hardly anything about basketball, but when I go to him he always asks me about how I feel about the team and what I think they will accomplish.  I just saw him last week. He told me he went to ONE basketball game last year and he didn't enjoy watching "that guy" hog the ball all the time. "They won't miss him, will they?" he asked me. "he seemed to always want the ball"  I laughed, here is a guy who doesn't know anything and saw what we saw with his untrained eyes.

He made me laugh! I swear he was proud of himself because he knew about "this team" I always talk about to him. Funny, we are not alone.

Exactly Rosie!!!

RosalieTCeltics wrote:The one thing I do believe is that Danny Ainge had an inkling from the last half of the first year of Kyrie tenure here, that there were issues that seemed to be beyond help.  I wish he had made the move and traded Kyrie. He had the control to do this, what stopped him?

l.  Admitting he made a mistake in bringing Kyrie here??
2.  Admitting that IT was more of a leader?
3.  Hoping that this team would turn the corner and behave up to
    the talent he believed they had?
4.  Hoping Kyrie would wake up:

It was obvious from the late fall, early winter on that Kyrie was unhappy. The way he turned
on fellow playsl
Whatever the reason, there was no pot at the end of this rainbow and the Celtics allowed this
major talent to walk away laughing. This should never have happened. But......it did and we still ended up with a terrific point guard.  

Kyrie's story will be the black mark in Celtic history forever. A guy like that walking away from a major team like the Celtics is awful, but having Kemba walk in is a better story

Good post, with legitimate questions. Sometime ago on another post I asked whether or not Ainge should have moved Kyrie at the deadline. I was accused of Monday morning quarterbacking, and there is probably some truth to that accusation. Nonetheless, a lot of us on this board and elsewhere saw that Kyrie was neither committed to the Celtics nor even a particularly good fit well before the trade deadline. Given the amount of info Danny, Brad, and Wyc have/had that we fans are not privy to, one has wonder if there were even clearer warning signs. My feeling is that a major reason Danny stuck with the Kyrie plan is that he saw it as his most likely path to getting Anthony Davis. He simply thought Kyrie would help attract Davis.

I don't take the article above to literally mean Danny would have traded Kyrie for Kemba, rather I see it as a possible window in Danny's thinking, i.e. that Kemba is also a pretty damn good player, and there isn't as great a talent difference as the press always claims. Sure Kyrie has a prettier game and had better efficiency than Kemba, but look who Kemba was playing with. When you have to carry that kind of load, efficiency is going to suffer.

Such a shame. We could've had a jumpstart on chemistry-building.


KJ