Is it July 1 yet?
That’s the day NBA free agency officially begins. It’s also the day that Kyrie Irving told us all about, back in February.
“Ask me on July 1,” he said, when grilled about whether or not he’d re-sign with the Boston Celtics.
There’s no word on if Irving will be made available to the media on or around that date. But if he is, it’s most likely going to be in the form of an introductory press conference with a new team.
Last week, I told you that the “Irving experiment” in Boston needs to come to an end, for both sides. It doesn’t feel like he ever really wanted to be here in the first place, and as crazy as it sounds, this group of Celtics might be better off without him.
I also told you that the Los Angeles Lakers are a strong possibility. I’ve been trying to tell you that for a while. But nobody wanted to believe me. The popular reaction from everyone was, “Kyrie and LeBron hate each other. They’d never want to play on the same team again.”
Well, on my podcast last week — “The Danny Picard Show” — I was joined by a guy who played with both Irving and LeBron James. And if you’re going to analyze and dissect all of Irving’s rumored landing spots this summer, if he chooses to opt out of the final year of his deal with the Celtics and become an unrestricted free agent, then you can’t ignore the Lakers, which means you certainly can’t ignore the truth about the relationship between Irving and James.
And according to Perkins, the truth is exactly what I’ve been trying to tell the basketball world for a while now: Irving and LeBron don’t really hate each other.
“You’re 100 percent right,” said Perkins on my show. “LeBron and Kyrie never had a problem. There was a never a beef between those guys. I wouldn’t be surprised either if he ended up in LA.”
For all the “Kyrie would never choose to play with LeBron again” talk, Perkins’ description of their relationship seems like a pretty important part of that argument. If there was “never a beef” between Irving and James, then what’s stopping Irving from signing with the Lakers?
Absolutely nothing.
In fact, if there’s no beef between Irving and James, like Perkins says, then it’s almost a lock, in my opinion, that the next time we hear from Irving, he’ll be sitting at a press conference inside the Staples Center next to Jeanie Buss and Rob Pelinka, while Magic Johnson smiles from home, collecting his cash commission.
Not to go off on a tangent here, but everybody does know that Johnson could’ve just fired Pelinka if Pelinka was truly “backstabbing” Johnson, like Johnson said on ESPN this week, right? I’m still under the impression that Johnson and the Lakers are simply finding a way to “tamper” without actually tampering.
I’m also under the impression that, as for the Celtics, Irving is as good as gone. It just can’t be made official until, oh, what’s the date? Oh yeah, July 1.
That’s when you’ll all be shocked to hear that Irving is leaving Boston to go to LA, that the apologetic phone call he told everyone he placed to James was simply a way to cover up the in-season phone records and cries for help from James, and that perhaps I was right all along when I told you Irving and James had this Hollywood reunion planned for years.
There’s no beef. Perk said so. I believe him.
And I also believe that Irving will become a Laker by the time we get to July 1.
Listen to “The Danny Picard Show” on PodcastOne, iTunes, and Spotify. Follow him on Twitter @DannyPicard. Subscribe to YouTube.com/DannyPicard.
