It’s pretty safe to say that not a whole of lot people that are going to miss Kyrie Irving’s antics this season. But how much will the Boston Celtics miss his production on the court?
Answers to this question likely would vary quite a bit depending on who you asked.
There are plenty out there that believe Celtics can be just as big a threat in the Eastern Conference with Kemba Walker now running the point and Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum one year closer to their primes. But a pair of simulations show that the Celtics might take more than their fair share of lumps in Year One of the post-Kyrie era.
New York Times writer Marc Stein asked those at “NBA 2K20” and makers of the classic sim game “Strat-O-Matic” each to simulate the 2019-20 NBA season. In both sims, the Celtics finished out of the playoffs.
“The Celtics are going to miss Kyrie Irving,” Stein wrote. “With Kemba Walker in Kyrie’s place, alongside his fellow U.S.A. Basketball teammates Jayson Tatum, Jaylen Brown and Marcus Smart, Boston somehow finished 41-41 — and out of the playoffs — in both simulations.”
Of course, these are just simulations and two of seemingly an infinite amount of possible outcomes for the C’s this season.
In the grand scheme of things, it’s totally possible the Celtics will be among the contenders in the East, it’s also totally possible they miss the playoffs. Nobody knows anything — that’s what make predictions and simulations fun (and dumb, considering the 2K model had the New York Knicks going to the conference finals).
Oh, and to top it off, Irving’s Brooklyn Nets make it to the NBA Finals in the 2K sim, losing to LeBron James and the Los Angeles Lakers in five games.
