The future of one Kyrie Irving is set to be the biggest talking point of this 2023 offseason, with the star guard entering free agency.

There still really isn’t any clarity on whether he’ll stay with the Dallas Mavericks or go elsewhere, with the Los Angeles Lakers being the team linked with him the most. The Athletic’s Jovan Buha doesn’t believe there is a great chance of Irving ending up in L.A. but he did reveal the most realistic way it could happen.

“More realistically, Irving would have to take a substantial discount to sign with the Lakers in free agency, something he’s shown no willingness to do yet,” Buha wrote. “To even make that a possibility, Los Angeles must willingly gut its depth to create cap space. In that scenario, the Lakers’ roster would probably be composed of James, Davis, Irving, Austin Reaves, a taxpayer mid-level exception signing and a bunch of minimum contracts.”

With the Mavericks reportedly not being interested in a sign-and-trade, it would appear the only way he ends up with the Lakers is if they just sign him as a free agent. While they’d have three stars in Irving, LeBron James, and Anthony Davis if they go in that direction, there won’t be much around them. Even for as great as those three are, they’d need more than Austin Reaves and a mid-level exception player to win a championship.

LeBron James Is The One Pushing The Lakers To Land Kyrie Irving

The Lakers as per Buha, just want to run it back next season by retaining as many players as possible and it has been reported numerous times by now that they aren’t interested in Kyrie. The one who does want Irving on the Lakers is LeBron and it would appear there could be some tensions behind the scenes because of it.

An NBA GM warned LeBron against clashing with the front office, as the last time it happened was when he wanted them to trade for Russell Westbrook. We all know how that panned out and things could go horribly wrong with Irving as well.