If I would have told you 12 days ago that the Los Angeles Lakers acquiring Rui Hachimura would have semi-directly led to Kyrie Irving demanding that the Brooklyn Nets deal him before the NBA trade deadline, you probably would have called me some combination of crazy, a conspiracy theorist, or someone just hunting for clicks.
However, while I admittedly would not have predicted those events back then, Michael Scotto of HoopsHype — with the help of some of his trusty league sources — made a convincing case that may have been exactly what happened in his story published on Saturday morning:
After the Lakers traded for Rui Hachimura, it signaled to the rest of the league Los Angeles would bypass prioritizing cap space for the summer to chase star free agents like Irving.