Former Boston Celtics champion center rips Kyrie Irving’s Nets tenure

With Kyrie Irving now traded to the Dallas Mavericks, his Brooklyn Nets tenure is being eulogized across the NBA world — and former Boston Celtics championship center Kendrick Perkins is not in the business of mincing any words about it.

According to Perkins, Irving’s Nets stint will go down as disappointing because of the failure of the ‘big 3’ of Irving, Kevin Durant, and James Harden to achieve anything of note besides their first-round elimination of the Boston Celtics from the 2022 postseason.

Perkins shared his thoughts on the superteam that wasn’t via his Twitter just after the 2023 Dallas-Irving trade was finalized:

Kyrie Irving has only been able to destroy one NBA franchise he’s been a part of — and it’s not the Boston Celtics

When Kyrie forced the Cleveland Cavaliers front office’s hand with his trade demand, the team was still able to make the following season’s Finals being led by LeBron James and a host of role players. While it’s taken Cleveland a while to get back to relevancy, it was James’ departure that collapsed the Cavs. Not Irving’s.

Fast forward to a year after Irving’s departure from Boston, and you’ll see another team that made it to at least the conference finals. While Irving did a number on the C’s locker room chemistry, he couldn’t destroy it — the team made the 2018 conference finals without him and Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown blossomed into stars despite his ball-dominance during the 2018-19 season, a formative year in both of their careers.

The only team that Irving was able to do long-term damage to was the Nets. Brooklyn could be on the verge of a complete teardown with a Kevin Durant trade now possible. They won exactly one playoff series and the team they beat (the Boston Celtics) swept them the postseason after that.

Now that it’s all said and done, perhaps the Nets would’ve been better off if Irving and Durant chose the Knicks during 2019 free agency.