It Sure Sounds Like Kyrie Irving Is Going To Leverage The Mavs Into Giving Him The Free Agent Deal That He Wants

Kevin C. Cox. Getty Images.

And that my friends, is how you use your leverage.

All that shit about finding a place he can spend the rest of his career that feels like home? Sorry, heard that before. It's pretty obvious what this really is, and that's a leverage play.

When the Mavs gave up what they did to bring in Kyrie, they basically told the world that they were going to be at his mercy this summer. You can't give up those assets and let that player leave for nothing, especially when you have no way of replacing him given your cap situation. 

So what does Kyrie do to ensure he gets the deal/money he wants? He throws out that he's meeting with other teams. As a reminder, here are the teams with legit space

How many of those teams are going to be begging to give big money/years to get into the Kyrie Irving business? Maybe the Rockets if they can't land Fred VanVleet? I suppose maybe he's looking for a team that might be into bringing him in as some sort of sign and trade, and maybe at that point the Mavs are cool with letting Kyrie go because at least it wouldn't be for nothing. It's not like bringing him in got them over the hump or anything so maybe they cut their losses.

This more so just sounds like Kyrie and his camp and trying to get Cuban by his shorthairs into giving him an offer that he wants. For all we know the team wants to do a 1+1 or a 2+1 and Kyrie wants 3 or 4 years guaranteed. We're seeing the same shit go down in Philly with James Harden. Is he really going to leave for Houston? Probably not, but he has the leverage and Morey doesn't. As long as there's a team out there with space, the players will have the leverage in stuff like this.

If I had to guess, I bet the Mavs cave. Maybe they don't cave on the years/structure, so they make up for it in price. What other choice do they have really?

P.S.

Speaking of Kyrie, whatever happened to this?