Boston Celtics: NBA fans are the real winners of the Kyrie Irving trade

This Boston Celtics team is for real, and they’ve effectively been playing with both arms tied behind their back. We’ll be seeing a lot of Kyrie Irving in May and June moving forward.

As I watched LeBron James play perhaps the most dominant playoff game of his career Thursday night in “LeBronto,” I couldn’t help but feel a little sadness.

As amazing as this is, it will not last. LeBron will one day retire his position as Mayor of the capital city of Ontario. For a brief moment, I was worried about where basketball was headed.

But then the basketball gods provided us with another spectacle: the nexus of superior coaching and talent at the TD Garden. 

We need not fear another era of boring basketball. We wont see teams like the 2000s Detroit Pistons, New Jersey Nets or San Antonio Spurs making deep runs. We’ll see Giannis Antetokounmpo, Ben Simmons, Joel Embiid and Kyrie Irving.

And we’re going to see a lot of Kyrie Irving. These Boston Celtics are for real.

I know we like to give Brad Stevens all of the credit — and he certainly deserves a lot of it — but there are a lot of great players on this team.

Even with Gordon Hayward and Kyrie Irving wearing suits on the bench, Stevens has incredible talent at his disposal. Al Horford, Jayson Tatum, Marcus Smart, Greg Monroe and Jaylen Brown are all top-seven draft picks. Horford, Tatum and Brown were each drafted third.

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It is no fluke that this team is, yet again, just two wins away from an appearance in the Eastern Conference Finals.

I love me some Ben Simmons. As a LeBron fan, I love the intangible effect that players like Simmons have on the game of basketball. Joel Embiid is a stud, and I truly believe he’ll remain healthy. 

But make no mistake, this Celtics team is just flat-out better. Add the veteran presence of Hayward and the supreme confidence of Irving to this existing group and you have a force we haven’t seen since, well, the last time the Golden State Warriors took the floor (and now I’m depressed again).

The point being, we’re going to see Kyrie Irving in June a lot over these next few years. And we, as basketball fans, deserve that.

I know Cavaliers fans are still somewhere between hopeless and angry after the Kyrie trade last summer, but the reality is that both teams “won” that deal. 

The Celtics avoided the Isaiah Thomas conundrum while retaining most of their draft stash and bringing in the best closer in basketball. The Cavaliers, on the other hand, set themselves up for a real chance to keep LeBron, or to move into a new era if he does decide to leave. 

Had Kyrie Irving stayed, this season would’ve looked remarkably similar to last season. The Cavaliers would’ve coasted through the malaise of the regular season, won 50-ish games, and cruised through the Eastern Conference Playoffs. 

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But then they would have lost to the Warriors and LeBron would be at the same free agent crossroads he’s currently at. 

Instead, Cleveland has a legitimate shot at trading for Kawhi Leonard this summer. As Peter Vecsey has reported, the Spurs are determined to trade Kawhi to an Eastern Conference team.

Cleveland can build a package centered around the Brooklyn pick and Kevin Love — an expiring contract Gregg Popovich would make fantastic use of — giving them one of the best shots of any Eastern Conference team at the perennial MVP candidate.

If Cleveland didn’t have the Brooklyn pick, it would have no chance at Kawhi, which would result in no chance at keeping LBbron.

The bottom line being that both Cleveland and Boston are sitting pretty after this trade, even if it can be hard for Cavaliers fans to see the forest for the trees.

There is a third winner of the Kyrie trade, though, as I mentioned earlier. The NBA is a better place when Kyrie Irving is doing his thing on ABC in June. Few players in the history of basketball make a made field goal look prettier.

I believe — with exception of maybe next year if LeBron impossibly remains at this level, and gets Kawhi Leonard — this Boston Celtics team will be in the NBA Finals every year for a long time. 

We’re going to see a lot more of this:

And this:

That gives me hope for an entertaining future after LeBron James’ Eastern Conference reign is over.

Next: Full two-round 2018 NBA Mock Draft

There are plenty of winners from the Kyrie Irving trade. The biggest ones, however, are NBA fans in general.