Suffice to say that Kyrie Irving’s Boston’s Celtics tenure, provided it ends Sunday as many expect it will, was a bizarre one.
Things never seemed to click with Irving and Boston, especially this past season, a wildly underwhelming year that led to a second-round exit in the playoffs. Irving turned cold in the final months of the season, despite promising before the campaign that he planned to re-sign with Boston.
That coldness and the bitter end in Boston that resulted was summed up pretty well at the end of the regular season, it seems. ESPN’s Jackie MacMullan shared a story that certainly serves as a poetic ending to Irving’s time with the Celtics.
“At the completion of the regular season, the team set up 100 balls in a room for their charitable partners.” MacMullan wrote. “Everyone signed the balls except Irving. When pressed to do it, say team sources, he was neither aggressive nor confrontational. He merely said, ‘No, I’m not interested in that.'”
Huh.
Hey, maybe that’s just Kyrie being Kyrie. But nonetheless, it’s a pretty weird story, and weirdness has become all too familiar for Irving.
