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Brian Winhorst, a very busy man.

We always appreciate when he stops by.

Makes us smarter ESPN senior NBA writer.

I think we're all guilty of wishful reporting there, Wendy.

And it felt like that's what it was yesterday,

like Kyrie to the Lakers. So that's why I thought, let's separate fact from fiction here.

What do you think transpired yesterday? And where's that going to lead us in, say, a week?

So this is a leverage game that Kyrie is playing. It's a leverage game the Nets are playing.

I mean, right now, as you can imagine, the Nets don't believe that there's a lot of teams that are willing to pay Kyrie Irving $35 to $40 million, which is his max salary.

I think you can actually go up to $42 million. Frankly, there's not that many teams that have that kind of cap space, maybe one or two.

And frankly, even other teams that potentially would be able to sign them, how many people really want to commit to Kyrie Irving after what they've watched for the last couple of years?

So the Nets are, you know, I think the Nets want to keep Kyrie, but I don't think they want to give them a five-year contract for over $200 million. I think they want to give them something that's much shorter. And even if it has got multiple years on it, they want to have some protection so that Kyrie doesn't, you know, do what he's done the last couple of years on them. And I think that's natural. And if you're Kyrie Irving, I think you're saying, I'm in demand. I am an all-star

player in my prime. There's no reason why I should settle for less. And teams like the Los Angeles,

Lakers, and New York Knicks probably want me. And where this gets complicated is two reasons.

One, you have Kevin Durant out there. Because if Kyrie Irving leaves for nothing,

which I'll discuss in a minute about that possibility, Durant's going to be like, I'm about to

turn 34 years old, I'm in a four-year contract here, and we're in a rebuild now facing

somewhat of a rebuild here. I'm not down for that. And then what does Durant's move? So really,

Kyrie's sort of backstop is,

well, what are you going to tell Kevin? Even if Kevin isn't 100% in love with the partnership that he has with Kyrie, he realizes they're better with them than if he walks for nothing.

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