Cleveland Cavaliers guard Iman Shumpert said that Kyrie Irving wanting a trade wasn’t the problem, but instead how everyone went about it.
Iman Shumpert, filling in for Joe Budden, appeared on an episode of Complex’s “Everday Struggle,” where he gave his perspective on the entire Kyrie Irving saga. “It’s all business, man,” explained Shump. “But you got to think, though, they three (Irving, LeBron James and Kevin Love) superstars, All-Stars, on one team. As frustrating as it is for me just to deal with that, for another superstar …
“We all kinda knew about certain things about this team that was tough. It’s tough.”
The Cavaliers have since moved Irving to the Boston Celtics, but his initial demand for a trade was shocking, at least to some of us on the outside. He told the organization that he wanted to be “the guy” for another franchise and that playing alongside LeBron was, essentially, hurting him. Before those reports surfaced, other ones had, saying Irving went consecutive days without speaking to his teammates during the postseason.
The drama surrounding Irving’s situation was the biggest story happening. Despite the offseason being quiet, when a star of Kyrie’s magnitude has rumors swirling around him, they’re going to be difficult to ignore, and that’s the one thing Shumpert wished the parties handled differently.
“I didn’t expect it to happen how it happened. I didn’t expect it to be a big thing. It was a dragged-out thing,” said Shumpert. “I don’t know how it was leaked.
I know as a team, as a whole, when we all talked about it, when I talked to Kyrie about it … just wish that it was more controlled in a sense that the fans didn’t have to have weird quotes, and is this true, is that true, and all this shit coming out. We wished that it could have been, this trade happened. Boom. That’s it.”
In 72 games with Cleveland last year, Kyrie Irving averaged 25.2 points and 5.8 assists with a true shooting percentage of 58.0. He got traded to Boston for Isaiah Thomas, Jae Crowder, Ante Zizic and the Brooklyn Nets’ 2018 first-round pick.
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