Cleveland Cavaliers: Kyrie Irving’s trade request could throw NBA into turmoil

Late in the afternoon, ESPN dropped a bombshell: Kyrie Irving wants to be traded from the Cleveland Cavaliers.

The internet loves to overreact to stuff these days, but this qualifies as a story that really could shake up an entire league.

(The NBA would still be 29 teams chasing the defending-champion Golden State Warriors, but still..)

While there is no guarantee this actually happens — perhaps in no small part because the Cavaliers don’t have a general manager — it figures to become the dominant story in the league until he is moved or things are smoothed over.

I’ve tended to roll my eyes at the early stories about what LeBron James might do next year when he can become a free agent again, but if he doesn’t have Irving, all bets would seem to be off.

Earlier reports indicated James is frustrated with the way the offseason is going for his team, which lost to the Warriors in the NBA Finals, and that is understandable.

The surprising exit of GM David Griffin seems to have hamstrung a team that already was rather short on options for improving to the point they can have a clearly improved chance of beating the Warriors next season.

I had been operating under the assumption that despite reports they would like to trade Kevin Love — Now, would they be trading the All-Star player they acquired from Minnesota or the role player the turned him into in Cleveland? I haven’t quite figured that out, but I digress… — they would probably end up looking fairly similar this fall to the team that took the court in June.

For at least one more year, that wouldn’t be the end of the world.

Cleveland is still the best team in the East, and I would give them at least a puncher’s chance against the Warriors as things stand now, particularly if they can rework the bench.

But losing a guy who can carry the team during stretches — who was a key difference-maker in the Finals the Cavs won over the Warriors in ’16 — would obviously be a devastating blow for LeBron’s chances of adding more championships to his legacy.

The Cavs-Warriors trilogy has been a lot of fun to watch.

Is it over all of a sudden?

The question of who will be Golden State’s biggest challenger would open widely if Irving isn’t replaced with a similarly talented player in Cleveland.

That could actually be good for November-May, but maybe not so much June.