One phone call might have simultaneously saved the Boston Celtics’ season while also possibly derailing their future.
After leading the C’s to a much-needed win over the Toronto Raptors, Kyrie Irving revealed he had recently called LeBron James and apologized for “being that young player that wanted everything at their fingertips.”
Irving and James’ relationship apparently on the mend, speculation that Irving, who will be a free agent this offseason, could join James on the Los Angeles Lakers naturally has come up.
The thought of James and Irving linking up again sounded like crazy talk 18 months ago when the star guard asked the Cleveland Cavaliers to trade him in order to escape James’ shadow and a seemingly fractured relationship.
But is it crazy now? Former teammate Kevin Love believes Irving’s quirky personality makes anything possible.
“The funny thing about Kyrie is it’s like just when you think you know what he’s thinking then he will completely flip,” Love told Chris Fedor of Cleveland.com. “I think he likes to keep people guessing. I think that’s going to be the big question this off-season. I know he said he was coming back to Boston and he very well could, but I think the only person that knows what Kyrie is going to do is Kyrie. I don’t know if he’s made up his mind yet.
“He could change on the drop of a dime because something will come up or the mood he was in or I don’t know.”
Channing Frye, on the other hand, thinks the idea of the two stars linking back up is completely nuts.
“God no. No way,” Frye told Fedor. “I think Kyrie is that guy that deserves his own team, that has the ability to take that team to a championship and I think in Kyrie’s mind he knows that and the rest of the league knows that. He’s reached that elite-level status and I think people want to play with him. He’s not second fiddle. He’s not Robin. He’s Nightwing.”
One source reportedly told Fedor that while James and Irving don’t dislike each other, a union in LA is highly unlikely.
“There was no Draymond-KD stuff with them,” a source said.
“I don’t think there’s any likelihood that would happen. Nothing precludes it from happening other than it’s not what Kyrie would prefer. Not because he doesn’t like LeBron. They didn’t have personal malice. But it’s because he likes being ‘the man’ more. I don’t think he wants to be viewed as following LeBron again to win.”
But if the C’s flame out early in the playoffs and the team struggles to jell, Irving could decide to leave TD Garden for greener pastures.
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