For those looking to rewrite history and attempt to portray Kyrie Irving’s Boston Celtics tenure as one that lacked any great moments, stop while you’re ahead. While the partnership will forever go down as an underwhelming one, Irving in green and white wasn’t a union that never brought joy.
Heading into the 2018-19 season, there was not a single team that inspired more post-LeBron James Eastern Conference championship predictions than the Cs. They had come within a quarter of the NBA Finals three years ago without Irving, but most saw him as the final piece needed to bring it all together for Boston.
Then, the Eastern Conference semifinals against the Milwaukee Bucks happened, and the partnership dissolved. Spencer Dinwiddie’s recruitment of the mercurial New Jersey-based floor general throughout the first half of 2019 was a primary culprit for the ongoing dissolution of any hope Irving would live up to his October 2018 declaration to Cs fans that he’d retire as a member of the Boston Celtics.
Throughout that season, Irving was clearly unhappy, even going as far as to say he’d leave the game earlier than expected. That kind of rhetoric isn’t spoken any longer.
Now, he is about redemption in Brooklyn.
With the #2-seeded Nets, he could achieve that with a victory over Boston in the first round of the Eastern Conference playoffs. Doing so would provide him validation, but what’s done is done…and the damage done in Beantown by the former #1 pick cannot be reversed.
The New York Post’s Ian O’Connor acknowledged as much this past week:
"In the end, Nets-Celtics is going to be an intriguing, this-is-your-life first round for Irving, whose unforced errors in the fabled green will be rightfully and loudly revisited by the media and fans to the north. But Irving’s story isn’t really a Boston story anymore. This one is about New York. Irving is trying to mix his father’s Bronx toughness with his own New Jersey attitude to win a ring in Brooklyn."
Is the Irving-Boston Celtics angle more hoopla than legitimate hoops buzz? Perhaps, but the beauty of the NBA is that the stories somehow often read like a Hollywood script.
This isn’t Space Jam 2, though. There is bad blood, and Irving’s unsuccessful stint with the Cs is a major reason why. The New York Media recognizes that, but they also don’t believe Boston is even relevant to the narrative.
A Nets sweep (or gentleman’s sweep) would make that true. The Cs somehow winning the series would metaphorically stick that idea in the freezer.