The\u00a0LeBron James saga is finally over and the NBA offseason can continue as normal.<\/p>\n
Needless to say, when the greatest (or second greatest, depending who you ask) basketball player of all time settles on what might be\u00a0the final stop of his legendary NBA career, it’s going to make waves all across the country. In Dallas, there might be a little more to it.<\/p>\n
D-FW’s sports radio guys reacted to the LeBron signing on Friday with varying degrees of surprise and a readiness to move past it, but also mixed in a discussion about whether James’ old pal Kyrie Irving could join him in Philly via a trade by the Mavericks.<\/p>\n
A possibility? Perhaps. A wild one? For sure. Here’s what some of Dallas’ sports talk experts had to say on the subject.<\/p>\n
Bob Sturm: “We’re never getting rid of him. He’s gonna go from a central figure in the NBA as a player to a central figure in some other capacity and we’re never actually getting rid of LeBron James. But that might be a feature, not a bug, depending on how you feel. And I know a lot of people can’t get enough, so they’re thrilled today that the 41-year-old for now, 42-year-old in December, LeBron James will join those boys in Philadelphia.”<\/p>\n
Dave Lane: “As a casual, to me this is the best possible outcome. He’s not going somewhere he’s been before. He’s going to a place that hasn’t won in a very long time that has been close, but has not really achieved what they’re supposed to achieve. He has other guys there that are established stars, but he’s taking a discount. He’s going for the veteran minimum. It’s a very un-LeBron-like thing to do, so it looks like he truly honestly wants just one more chance to win before he hangs them up. So I think this is great.”<\/p>\n
Sturm: “… We’re now four years into the Nick Nurse run, and it’s, you know \u2014 they’ve been there. They’ve been there but they have not come close, so when they did that Paul George trade for Jaylen Brown it actually helped facilitate this opening, but it would require LeBron taking almost no money. And to his credit, he realized, ‘Wait a minute, I already have a billion dollars, I don’t have to make this contract decision for the money. Let’s go somewhere with a really fun roster.’ And I can’t deny that, that’s a really fun roster if Embiid stays healthy.”<\/p>\n
Kevin Hageland: “Why you should care about this locally if you don’t care about LeBron is the idea of Kyrie going to Philadelphia. … It makes sense if you think about it. And it’s a shame, because Philadelphia has two of the three elements that I think would be perfect for a Kyrie trade. And some people are going to get mad at this and say it’s an insane trade but I’m gonna throw it out there anyway.<\/p>\n
“[V.J.] Edgecombe and Labaron Philon Jr. for Kyrie. Now the issue there is that you don’t have the money to make it match. Good for Philly for not having this contract on the books, but I really wish Philly had like a garbage player that made $30 million because then I think we could make this deal. Because then you’d be like ‘Hey you’re gonna take our garbage $30 million player, we want Kyrie and we’ll give you these other two young assets.’ Which I have to think the Mavericks would be salivating at, because then that would handle some of your issue when it comes to guard play and potentially shooting and stuff like that.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The\u00a0LeBron James saga is finally over and the NBA offseason can continue as normal. Needless to say, when…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":795578,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3793],"tags":[7,686,149,4057,166,6,3647,87203,90942],"class_list":["post-795577","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-dallas-mavericks","tag-basketball","tag-dallas","tag-dallas-mavericks","tag-dallasmavericks","tag-mavericks","tag-nba","tag-sports-media","tag-tp-dallas-mavericks","tag-tp-kyrie-irving"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116981264775100020","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/795577","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=795577"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/795577\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/795578"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=795577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=795577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=795577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}