I wouldn't count Kyrie out so quickly. He was having a great offensive season before he went down this year, and he came back from his catastrophic 2015 injury with two 25 PPG playoff seasons. He just can't be the best player on a playoff team, he's not a winner that way and never was.
He played very well this season but it was only 20 games. Over nine seasons he's averaging LESS than 60 games a year. That's a big problem.
Anyway, this story has, in retrospect, really put a different spin on two of RCF's hobbyhorses:
- Bitching about the Kyrie trade. There was a ton of complaining about how it was Dan's fault because we didn't keep Griff; it was LeBron's fault for "sonning" him; it was a horrible return for Kyrie. Well, it's pretty obvious that getting rid of Kyrie is like dumping a chick whose 9/10 on the hot/crazy matrix. Everyone thinks you're nuts for dumping her; then she's someone else's problem and you're laughing at them. We have a nice asset (Sexton) and when we dumped the others from that trade we got some return from that. I think we did FAR better than Boston and Brooklyn may live to regret signing that guy.
- Bitching about Ty Lue. That guy deserved a legit purple heart. LeBron isn't easy to deal with at all, but Kyrie + JR as well? Then there was the Love "fit in or fit out" (ok that was under Blatt but it did show the tension with Kevin -- echoes of that lately). No wonder Lue broke down his last full year. I'm not saying he's the greatest coach who ever lived -- I'm saying we should respect the fact that he put up with that crap at long as he did.
I don't think any coach will satisfy Kyrie.