The clock continues to tick closer to zero on the Kyrie Irving/Isaiah Thomas blockbuster trade deadline (Thursday morning), but as the final solution to the deal remains in question, one thing is becoming more clear: the Cavs are trying some bush league tactics in the aftermath of the originally agreed upon deal.

There have been question marks about Cleveland’s motives in the wake of the revelation that the team had some serious questions about Thomas's hip after his physical and were unsure if they wanted to proceed with the original deal. I’m not going to fault the Cavs’ brass for proceeding cautiously there. They have every right to take a closer look at Thomas’s hip situation, and it’s obviously possible that their doctors disagreed with Boston’s medical staff on how bad the prognosis was for Thomas this season. Conflicting opinions occur all the time in the medical community, and it’s why players go to see multiple doctors on their ailments and make an informed decision from there.

The problem I (and likely the Celtics too) have with the Cavs has come with how this ordeal has played out in the last few days. If the Cavs were operating in good faith, you would expect that once the news leaked (Friday night) about the physical concerns, the team would try to talk to the Celtics fairly promptly about it to come up with a resolution. Demanding more compensation is certainly reasonable in this situation, but one would imagine those talks would happen relatively quickly to see if the teams could find some common ground, particularly given how public the deal had become already. At that point, the Cavs could make the decision to walk away from the deal or not (or try to renegotiate up until the Thursday deadline).

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