The Rise and Fall of Kyrie Irving on the Boston Celtics: Part 2

October 2018: Kyrie was entering his 7th NBA season and his 2nd in a green jersey. With Irving and Hayward returning from injury, the re-signing of very serviceable defensive minded players, Marcus Smart and Aron Baynes, combined with the continued growth of young wingers, Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown, the Celtics were projected to be a championship level team. Before the start of the season Kyrie and a couple of his teammates did a live interview with Celtic legend Brian Scalabrine, he told the fans that "he would re-sign here (in Boston)".

February 2019: The Celtics entered the All Star break with a record of 37-21, tied for 4th in the east with an offensive traffic jam of a 76ers team centred around Joel Embiid and Ben Simmons. Whose play styles frustrated newly acquired star Jimmy Butler, but thats a story for another day. Although the Celtic's win to loss ratio was positive, it was not quite where they had wanted to be. The team had aspirations of being clear favourites in the eastern conference, made weaker by LeBron's move to Los Angeles in the Offseason.

There was a clear common factor in the games the Celtics had lost. Of the 21 losses the Celtics had through the first half of the season, Kyrie was the leading scorer in 15 of them, while in a lot of the wins, the scoring was shared more evenly with the other players.

This statistic bothered Kyrie for very selfish reasons. In the early years of his career Kyrie was the best player on a terrible Cavaliers team, after LeBron made his return to Cleveland, he often found himself playing Robin to LeBron's Batman or perhaps Alfred depending on where you place Kevin Love. But finally, in the prime of his career, Kyrie had the opportunity to be the best player on a winning team. With the perfect amount of young talent for him to mentor. A perfect cast of good defenders and good shooters for Kyrie to dribble around and to flourish as the superstar and to prove that he didn't need LeBron and Love to win.

April 2019: The Celtics finished the season with a record of 49-33. Entering into the playoffs as a 4th seed and only just securing home court advantage by 1 game over the Indiana Pacers. The Celtics felt confident going into the first round matchup verses the Pacers. With Victor Oladipo out with injury, It left Indiana without a reliable scoring option who could create for himself. The Celtics took advantage and winning series in 4 games. Kyrie played well, scoring 22.5 points a game at 42% he also averaged 8 assists per game.

Next up was the mighty 1st seed Milwaukee Bucks lead by Giannis Antetokounmpo. Game 1 was an inspiring victory for the Celts. The Bucks kept it relatively close for 3 quarters but eventually the Celtics pulled out of reach with a final score of 112 to 90. It was a big game for Kyrie, finishing with 26 points and was efficient while also having his signature amount of flash. he was helped by a spectacular performance by Al Horford, including a block on Giannis that I think about to this day.

This win raised the hopes of The Celtics and their fans, they thought that perhaps this was a finals worthy team. The hope continued into game two, the Celtics were only trailing by 1 point going into halftime. Throughout the 3rd the Bucks lead grew to 5, then 10, then 15, then 20. The Celtics played with dignity in the 4th Quarter, even outscoring Milwaukee but it wasn't enough. The final score was 102 to 123.

All was not lost however, as games 3 and 4 were to be played at TD garden and the people of Boston were hoping to rally their Celtics to at least one or possibly two victories to regain control of the series. Sadly though, the Bucks would beat the Celtics in front their home crowd. After that the Bucks easily took game 5 to win the series, after winning 4 straight games. Disheartening, to say the least.

The Celtics were eliminated from the Playoffs. Although coach, Brad Stevens tried took take the brunt of the criticism for the Celtics poor performance, the majority of the Blame went to Kyrie. Skip Bayless said Kyrie deserves 1000% of the blame for the disappointing season. However Kyrie rejected the notion that he deserved all the blame, he instead shifted it to the Celtics younger players. This caused restlessness in the locker room and caused a rift between Kyrie and the young Celtics core.

July 2019: There was even major conflict between Kyrie and Back up point guard and break out star Terry Rozier. In fact the celtics feared that their chances of re-signing Kyrie would be diminished if they kept Rozier, so they declined to give Rozier the extension he was asking for. In the off season he would sign with the Charlotte Hornets.

After promising Celtics fans that he would resign, after stunting the growth of several young players and even sending one to another team, after being murky with his intentions in the off season, Kyrie did the unthinkable. When he was traded to Boston Kyrie talked a big game about how he welcomed being the leader of a team but when the going got tough, all he could do was abandon ship. Kyrie left the Celtics in free agency and joined the division rivals, the Brooklyn Nets with, perhaps the only player in the league with star power comparable to LeBron, Kevin Durant. A spit in the face to Celtics fans. Kyrie tried and failed at being the top dog on a winning team and any further success he may have, this fact will tarnish it.

March 2021 (present day): It's now been 2 years since all of this happened. The Nets are one of the best teams in the NBA, Kyrie's last two seasons have been the best of his career. as well as having Durant alongside him, the Nets finalised a deal early in the year that gave them James Harden. They added ageing but still great forward Blake Griffin and if that wasn't enough theres talk of them signing possibly the best post up player in the world today LaMarcus Aldridge. If you had told me in July 2019 that all of this was going to happen, I probably would have thrown up in disgust at the drastic change in ideology in Kyrie.

Although they have assembled a super team in a fashion that could be described as dishonourable, It's looking like the Nets will make it to at least the finals and quite possibly get Kyrie his second ring. And as for the Celtics, they are having one of the worst seasons I've seen from them since Rondo left. I'm not sure if Kyrie being a Celtic has anything to do with them being nearly out of the Playoffs, but I like to think it does.