I don't see Irving ever being that super explosive guy who can carry an elite team with his scoring, but I also don't really see him becoming a passing pg who can run an efficient offense. He'll be a great player no doubt, but you're always gonna have problems integrating a point guard like that into a team concept
Why can't he score and run an efficient offense? And it's never hard to integrate a good 3 point shooting point guard into a team concept, especially when he has one of the most elite handles in the game. I think Kyrie could be plugged into any elite team in need of a point guard and fit in perfectly.
What you mean to say is that he could never be #1 option on an elite team, which I think is true. He needs someone as good or better than him on his team.
It's not his skillset or talent that's the problem, it's his mentality. When you watch him play, he doesn't seem to have a good grasp of how to get his teammates involved. He fuels himself by scoring first, and playmaking second. Basically he has that Nick Young/JR Smith mentality (obviously far more talented) where he predicates his game on scoring, he fuels his personal confidence by getting buckets
Irving played the 2 in high school, he still has that pure scoring mentality which would be great if he were a 6'6 SG, but not so much when you're a PG and are tasked with initiating offense for your teammates. What ends up happening a lot of times, is his teammates are just standing around watching him dribble instead of being involved in the play
I don't know about plugging him in to any elite team. He can score, but he doesn't bring any other intangibles that usually put elite teams over the top. CP3, Westbrook, Mike Conley, Tony Parker, Wall, Kyle Lowry, and others are actually better than their boxscore stats, because of the intangibles they bring in other areas. Irving is one of those players who is worse than his stats, he's not efficient and gets a lot of his numbers at the expense of team basketball. So it's hard to really say "Oh Irving is averaging 22/6, you can just plug him in for so and so on this other team and they'd be fine" because you're not considering what you are losing in other areas.
Of course if he had Durant, Griffin, etc they'd be a good team but Kyrie isn't the ideal PG imo
I'm sleep though.
