Aloha
So the soap opera continues. The latest is that the Lakers are the only team with interest in Kyrie. There is rumblings, probably started by his agent, that he’s willing to take the Lakers MLE. If it was anyone other then Kyrie, I would say they are just blowing smoke. But Kyrie is bent so you never know. I’d take Kyrie for the MLE for sure, but I have a hard time believing that’s going to happen.
No team likes to have talent walk for nothing. As Lakers fans we know this all to well. But if Im the Nets, I would say go ahead, opt out. The Lakers can’t do a sign and trade for him because of the hard cap. Kyrie would have to opt in for the Lakers to make a trade. And if you’re the Nets, do you really want to trade for Westbrook? If there truly is no other teams interested I don’t think Kyrie has much leverage. It has been said that the length of the contract is the issue, along with provisions about the number of games played. Given all the time he has missed that’s not unreasonable. It will be interesting to see what happens.
Kyrie is essentially laying out three options:
1. Decline his PO and do sign-and-trade with Lakers, which won’t work if he wants to be paid max amount. This option ends on Wed when Kyrie has to decide on his PO. He will opt in.
2. Then Lakers can trade for Kyrie if they can find a third team to give them something for Russ that the Nets will accept rather than risk losing Kyrie for nothing.
3. The MLE threat is how Kyrie holds the gun to the Nets head to force them to take what the Thunder gives the Lakers. The trigger is knowing he might be the only player in the league who would do this.
Kyrie’s only leverage is he is crazy!
Nets should be frightened to death to keep him.
Lakers should be just as frightened.
They could be highjacked the second summer in a row.
First by Russ. Second by Kyrie.
This is SOOOOOOOO LAKERS!