Kyrie Irving has never shied away from voicing his true feelings. Boston Celtics fans saw it plenty of times this season when the point guard called out his teammates and the media throughout the regular season.
But with the playoffs about to start, Irving reflected on the regular season that ended with a 116-110 win over the Washington Wizards. The season certainly didn’t go the way many originally had thought it would for the C’s, and Irving took responsibility for his actions this season after Wednesday’s practice.
“A lot of bullsh-t, a lot of just the up-and-downs that just could have been handled better from a professional standpoint,” he said, as transcribed by WEEI.com, “and I’m talking about me personally, I’m not talking about our team. I had a lot of questions, a lot of things that weren’t being answered straight up about what it takes to be a great professional in this league and I think that the frame of that is just outdated, in terms of what you have to be every single day and it’s not that hard.”
Irving, of course, called former teammate LeBron James to apologize for how he acted while the two were with the Cleveland Cavaliers, and that he didn’t know what James was going through then as a leader. But now the C’s point guard knows what needs to be done to lead a team, adding he allowed too much to bother him this year.
“… I’ve always had the answers, and I just looked in the wrong places,” he said, via WEEI. “I think that that for my career has been the biggest mistake since I came into this season, trying to get validation for stats or other things that really don’t have any validation in my life and allowing all of this to bother me. All you guys (media), all the questions — everything that comes with it is just so irrelevant to what I do on the court and how hard I work every single day.”
Irving and the C’s certainly will have their work cut out for them when they begin their playoff run against the Indiana Pacers, especially with the team reportedly being without Marcus Smart for potentially two rounds.
