Kyrie Irving and Anthony Davis now are Dallas Mavericks teammates following the latter’s stunning trade from the Los Angeles Lakers.
Had things transpired differently, they could have teamed up in Boston years ago — along with another NBA superstar.
Then-Celtics president of basketball operations Danny Ainge made a failed attempt to trade for Davis, the 10-time All-Star big man, during Irving’s ill-fated C’s tenure. And Boston, Irving revealed Tuesday, didn’t want to stop there.
According to the veteran point guard, the Celtics hoped to add both Davis and Kevin Durant — whom they previously tried to sign in 2016 — to form a superteam that also included a young Jayson Tatum.
“In 2018, it was a dream for Kyrie, AD, KD to be on one team and still keep JT and let him grow and then see how it goes,” Irving explained, via ESPN’s Tim Bontemps. “But back then, those young guys weren’t ready to be in trade rumors, man. Our locker room splintered after that, once they found out. It wasn’t (Jaylen Brown) or JT, but our locker room splintered once they started figuring out the trade rumors, and our season started going in a whole different way.”
Those big-name additions never materialized, and the 2018-19 Celtics season was a dysfunctional mess, ending with a second-round playoff exit and Irving bolting for Brooklyn. Boston went on to reach four of the next five Eastern Conference finals with Tatum and Brown as their headliners before finally winning it all last season, beating Irving and the Mavericks in the NBA Finals.
The new-look Mavs, who shocked the NBA over the weekend by trading away five-time All-NBA centerpiece Luka Doncic, will visit TD Garden on Thursday in what could be Davis’ first game with his new club.
“We all had that vision to play together in Boston,” Irving said, via ESPN. “Danny Ainge had a large responsibility in that, trying to make it happen, make sure I stayed in Boston. But we had some young pieces in JT and JB, and if we would have traded either one of them, who knows if they win a championship. So the franchise had to do what was best for them, and I had to do what was best for me. So then it didn’t necessarily make a lot of sense, because the pieces and assets we had, but now, in our older age, as they say, in our league, we get a chance to do something we envisioned a while ago when we were young kids, so it’s exciting now.”