After seeing what happened to IT after he literally broke his hip for them and his reward was not to get the max contract he thought was his due but rather getting shipped out as damaged goods in the Kyrie trade, I can’t blame a player for taking the money and a bigger role at another team as icing on the cake.
Yeah, I no longer believe in player loyalty, hometown discounts, etc. I think I started to change my opinion sometime in the 90s, when sources within the Red Sox front office would feed negative stories to the Globe regarding any free agent that left. Roger Clemens, Mo Vaughn, etc. It was clear that there was absolutely no loyalty, and that as soon as he was done being useful, he became discarded trash.
