Tyronn Lue advised Koby Altman that the Cleveland Cavaliers decide against trading Kyrie Irving.

Lue compared the situation to when the Los Angeles Lakers resisted Kobe Bryant's trade demands in 2007.

"We wanted to figure out is this real?" Altman said. "Is Kyrie someone we might want to bring back and say, 'Hey, look, players have figured it out in the past. You're going to figure it out. We're going to still be really good, we're going to be winning games, so it's not going to be all awful.' You know what I mean? So thinking about the parameters of that, the implications of that was something we were also always debating."

The Cavaliers eventually decided to trade Irving to the Celtics.

"You can't get better trading a four-time All-Star going into his prime and a 25-year-old point guard going into his prime," Altman said, "but it gives you a unique opportunity to shuffle the deck and figure out long-term planning, but also figure out what goes around LeBron that's going to help us win a championship."