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How the East was won: breaking down the Kyrie Irving-Isaiah Thomas trade

This story appears in ESPN The Magazine's Oct. 30 NBA Preview Issue. Subscribe today!

About that historic trade ...
The Kyrie Irving -- Isaiah Thomas swap marks the first trade between two teams that squared off in the previous season's conference finals since the Nuggets and SuperSonics did it in 1978. In fact, if you measure the average WARP (how many more wins a player is worth compared to a typical replacement-level player) of the active players involved, this was one of the biggest trades since the NBA-ABA merger in 1976.