First off, the one caveat to everything below here is that I don’t know the state of Isaiah’s hip. If the injury is going to keep him from being the player he was two seasons ago, let alone last year, it would somewhat change my opinion of the deal.

Second, this trade went down while I was on a plane and broke while I was waiting for a connecting flight that got cancelled. I’m currently stuck in a hotel and not in the best mood, so that’s a thing.

The Boston Celtics have traded Isaiah Thomas, Jae Crowder, Ante Zizic, and the Brooklyn Nets unprotected 2018 pick for Kyrie Irving, and I don’t understand why.

Next season’s Celtics will be good. Kyrie and Gordon Hayward and Al Horford and the Eastern Conference means they’ll probably win about as many games as last season and make it as far in the playoffs. Maybe they even make it to the Finals. I wouldn’t bet on it, but it’s possible. We don’t hang Eastern Conference Champions banners in this city, though.

Last season, Isaiah was better than Irving. Not a lot better, but better. He deserved to make All NBA and Kyrie didn’t and that’s what happened. Regardless of what Bill Simmons’s Dad would have you believe, Jae Crowder was also very good and now he’ll be very good for Cleveland and fill the exact role that they haven’t been able to find a solution for to this point. Boston has made very nice additions this summer but also lost their entire starting back court and the whole group of role players who dominated their plus-minus rankings. They’ll get a lot more All Star votes but probably not win many more games. No one believes that this group can beat Golden State.

In the medium term, this trade might make the team better. Kyrie is younger than Isaiah so, even removing the possibility of Isaiah not being re-signed and assuming that Kyrie will stay, it’s likely that he’ll be better than Thomas a few seasons from now. Jayson Tatum and/or Jaylen Brown should be replacing Crowder’s actual on-court value in those seasons and the future Nets pick probably wouldn’t be helping win games yet.

Still, in those seasons it’s hard to believe that this group is winning a title. Kyrie is a massively popular player with pedigree and a history of big shots. He’s also probably never going to be good enough to be the best player on the best team. Players who fit that criteria are almost universally MVP candidates by their third or fourth season. Kyrie has played six seasons and made one All NBA team. Unless you believe he’ll follow Steph Curry’s career arc, but without the injury explanation, there’s no precedent for him filling that role.

I have little doubt that, with Kyrie and Hayward and Jaylen and Jayson filling 80% of the starting lineup two or three seasons from now, the team will continue to be good. They just won’t be good enough to achieve what this franchise should be trying to.

In the long-term, this trade is a kick in the gut. The most likely path to a title was still through the draft picks. Next year’s draft is loaded at the top-end and, while Brooklyn might be better this season, there’s still a lottery and the team didn’t protect the pick. If that pick becomes a superstar this trade could kill the franchise, and the possibility of that happening is reason enough not to do this if you accept that they’re highly unlikely to follow this core to a title in the short- or medium-term.

Moving the final Nets pick for Kyrie also makes it harder to envision a trade for a historically significant player. The pleasant fantasy of trading for Anthony Davis is now harder to imagine without that pick as a centerpiece. Maybe a year from now a Horford-Tatum-Lakers Pick trade still does deliver that and turns this all on its head, but with what we know today it’s more difficult to believe than it was yesterday.

This trade simply seems like an overpay made to a team under-the-gun that leads the franchise nowhere truly special. After years of avoiding this exact trade for players of a similar ilk like Jimmy Butler and Paul George, and watching them eventually get traded for far less, the Celtics just pushed all-in to create a team that isn’t going to deliver Banner 18.

This trade breaks down as one season of Isaiah Thomas for one season of Kyrie Irving, then Jae Crowder, Ante Zizic, and the pick for the second season, plus the hope that Kyrie’s next contract will both be in Boston and better than Isaiah’s next deal. If this team already had a top-5 player I could buy that. If the pick was top-5 protected, converting to the Lakers/Kings/Sixers pick if that came in lower, I could buy that. Giving up an equal current player, one of the league’s best role players, and the most valuable single 3rd party owned pick in the league, to put together a team that’s going to make a whole bunch of playoff appearances and win no titles? That I can’t buy.