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 likely stand in-between Lue and another championship now that he’s been traded out West.
The Nets made official the Irving deal with the Dallas Mavericks that sent the All-Star starter southwest in exchange for ex-Net Spencer Dinwiddie, 3-and-D forward Dorian Finney-Smith, a 2029 first-round pick and a pair of second-round picks.
Lue’s Clippers play the Mavericks on Wednesday, and Irving, provided he passes a physical, is expected to be available and make his Dallas debut against his former head coach.
Right alongside MVP candidate Luka Doncic, giving the Mavericks one of the more reared scoring duos in all of basketball.
“Don’t make me think about it right now, please,” Lue said with a smile ahead of tip-off against the Nets on Monday. “There’s gonna be a tough challenge. Kyrie’s a guy we’ve always blitzed in the past. Luka’s always the guy we’ve blitzed in the past, and now you’ve got two of them.
“It’s gonna be a tough challenge for a lot of teams in the West.”
Lue opted not to get into the details of the controversies that plagued the Nets during Irving’s time in Brooklyn.
Irving appeared in only 143 of 288 possible regular season games during his three and a half seasons in Brooklyn. He missed games for a number of non-basketball related reasons, including “personal reasons” that kept him out two weeks after the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection in Washington, D.C.; his decision not to get vaccinated against COVID-19, which cost him almost half of the 2021-22 season; and his decision to post the link to a film containing antisemitic themes on both his Twitter and Instagram feeds.
“I just want what’s best for him, whatever’s good for him,” Lue said. “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 also pushed back against the idea he’s the so-called Irving whisperer, even though he’s one of few NBA coaches to successfully keep the embattled superstar 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 said. “Wherever he’s played, he’s produced and actually had better numbers [than in Cleveland], but we did have a core three guys with Kevin Love, LeBron [James] and Kyrie that all — Kyrie and LeBron averaged over 25, K-Love averaged 20, so just being able to play with two other great players and also score your points 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 said he wasn’t surprised at Irving’s trade request. Irving also requested a trade from the Cleveland Cavaliers in 2017.
“I think the whole league is crazy. The whole league, you never know what’s gonna happen,” he said. “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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