We Live In A World Where Apparently The Celtics Success Without Kyrie Irving Is A Bad Thing

I can’t say this wasn’t predictable. With how well things are going for the Celtics despite every single talking head not believing in them, it’s only natural that instead of admitting their mistakes, the focus shifts to a pretty hilarious take. Now before we dive in, I ask you to consider the source of both of these statements, and once you’re done laughing we’ll take a look.

Up first, Chris Broussard

“I’ve been thinking about the success of the Celtics without Kyrie Irving and Gordon Hayward, ” Broussard said, “and I’ve thought to myself: If I’m Kyrie Irving and I’m sitting there watching this go on, obviously you’re going to say you’re happy for your teammates and I’m sure on a certain level you are happy that the team is winning. But I’m just wondering, how are you feeling? You want to be needed. If you’re a star especially, you want to be apart of why you’re winning. And for this young team to be winning the way they are without Kyrie, I’m just wondering how you feeling?”

My guess is Kyrie feels frustrated in a sense that he’s not out there, but he’s also extremely happy for his team’s success. If Broussard implying that Kyrie is so selfish he would prefer to see the Celtics lose so that he can boast about how important he is? The guy who has gone out of his way to help Rozier develop as a player and has gone on to help Brad discuss how to beat CLE (something that clearly worked) this is a guy who’s unhappy?

Then, we got this same sort of take again, this time from Max Kellerman

I’m sorry give me a second, I’m still laughing. My favorite part “neither team needed him to get this far.” Here’s the problem with that statement. Sure, Kyrie hasn’t played this postseason so in that regard Max is telling the truth. The problem is, guess why they are in this position? Largely due to Kyrie Irving. Homecourt has proved to be pretty important right? Well a huge part of the reason why the Celtics have that advantage is because of the play of Kyrie during the year. Why are we at this point where just because the team has success with other players, then that means their stars aren’t important or as good as we thought? I’m not seeing why the two are lumped together. Maybe the Celtics just have a bunch of good players surrounding their stars.

We’re seeing this with Gordon Hayward as well. Because he hasn’t played all year, I’ve seen Celtics fans talk about how they should put him on the block for guys like Kawhi or AD. I’ll never understand this line of thinking, that just because good things are happening with guys out of the lineup, that the team should overreact and make drastic franchise altering decisions.

I find it pathetic that on top of that, talking heads are now trying to create or talk as if there is some sort of issue with Kyrie. Yes, he wanted to get out of Lebron’s shadow so he could be “The Man”. And he was “The Man” on this Celtics team, while unfortunately getting hurt. Just because they’ve won a few rounds and won Game 1 against Lebron doesn’t suddenly mean that Kyrie isn’t still “The Man” for this franchise. EVERYTHING they are doing moving forward revolves around Kyrie Irving.

The truth is, these guys were dead wrong when it came to evaluating this team, and now all they can do is make up some bullshit so everyone talks about that instead. I cannot believe either of these guys truly believe what they are saying. Then again like I said, consider the source so maybe they do.