The Boston Celtics lost game 5 of the 2nd round of the playoffs in Milwaukee and that concluded their series against the Bucks and their turbulent season. One man in particular didn’t show up: Kyrie Irving. That leads to the question: Is it time to put ‘Uncle Drew’ in his place?
Attitude
If you look at last year’s playoff team for the Celtics and this year’s, you’ll notice 2 big differences. Gordon Hayward and Kyrie Irving, both All-Stars, came back this year after season-ending injuries last year. Gordon Hayward didn’t perform at all this year, he doesn’t get a pass for it, but he’s also a bench player and came back from a gruesome injury. Kyrie Irving is the starting point guard and the superstar on this team. His performance is inexcusable if you look at everything that went down to get Kyrie here in Boston and what went down this season.
Kyrie got upset being second fiddle to one of the all-time greats in Cleveland, LeBron James, a guy that had led him and the Cavaliers to 3 straight NBA finals, winning one. Irving thought that he could be the main man on a team and demanded a trade after being disengaged from the team during the playoffs, according to various reports. Kyrie got traded to the Boston Celtics in exchange for (an injured) Isaiah Thomas, who had finished 4th in MVP voting, Jae Crowder, Ante Zizic and a first round pick in the 2018 NBA draft, which ended up being Collin Sexton.
Last year, when Irving got injured, the young Celtics team took the Cavaliers to 7 games in the Eastern conference finals. Terry Rozier III, Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown were amongst the breakout stars that would have to sacrifice to be able to implement Irving and Hayward back into the rotation. Throughout the year the Celtics looked dysfunctional and a lot of chemistry issues were highlighted. Irving’s impending free agency and press talk clearly had a negative effect on the team.
Attention
Irving looked like a real diva, wanting to attract attention with every word he said and then going off on the press for reacting to his words, claiming he just wanted to play basketball. Playing with LeBron gave him a taste of all the media attention and maybe he wanted more. The difference is, LeBron attracts attention because LeBron is LeBron, not by saying controversial things in almost every media gathering (even though that has happened a lot this year).
Irving told the media to wait for the playoffs, because the regular season didn’t mean anything to him. In the first round they went against the (decapitated) Indiana Pacers. Their main star, Victor Oladipo, had been out for a couple of months and the Celtics swept the Pacers. Irving averaged 22.5 points and almost 8 assists on 42% shooting from both the floor and deep. In the second round they went up against the Milwaukee Bucks, who held the best record in the NBA. The Celtics blew them out on their floor and Kyrie had a marvelous 26-point, 11-assist performance on 57% shooting and 40% from deep.
Then came games 2, 3, 4 and 5. The Celtics lost all of them and Kyrie was just terrible in those. He scored a total of 78 points in those 4 games while going 25/83 from the field. That’s 19.5 points per game on 30% shooting. Look, I can accept a few bad games from a player, even a superstar player, but it’s the way how you react to those that shows who you are as a basketball player. Kyrie’s body language and actual language in the postgame interviews was just terrible. “Who cares? I should’ve shot 30” was his response after being asked a question about his recent shooting slump. Everybody cares, Kyrie. The city, the organization, your teammates and most of all the fans. He let them down when it mattered most in the playoffs.
For a player that said earlier in the season that he was “made for the playoffs”, he didn’t show it at all. It looks like he will be going back to LeBron with his tail between his legs or team up with Kevin Durant in New York. One thing’s for certain, Kyrie isn’t your main guy if you want to win a championship. A great player at times when he wants to be, definitely one of the most talented players of all-time, but a beyond terrible leader.
Kyrie has to stop the antics, change his attitude and stay away from wanting all the attention. That’s the only way that he can become the player he wants to be. He wasn’t grateful for what he had, landed in probably the best situation as a leader and failed miserably, and that’s totally on him. Once Kyrie starts performing at a high standard again and when he proves that he’s not just someone that rides LeBron’s coattail we can talk about him being a top 3 point guard and a top 15 player again, but in the meantime, he has to get his act right.
Courtside 