Kyrie went 5-16 in getting eliminated and we have schadenfreude.
- Thread starter jose melendez
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Well that’s kinda silly. Every player says that when asked.
My apologies. You are correct.
Yes, every player does this and then mails it in in a playoff series before going to Brooklyn.
You really don’t know why Boston fans don’t like him?
You really don’t know why Boston fans don’t like him?
Well we certainly shouldn't hate him for that reason, now.
We should thank him.
Others have well covered the main reasons why I hate him, with a special accent on his many anti-Semitic comments and actions. And hate him more than any current or recent Boston sports villain.
I will add one more: Stepping on the Cs logo was petty, classless and douchey. It’s not as if the logo is sacred. But only an asshole would do that after a series win.
I will add one more: Stepping on the Cs logo was petty, classless and douchey. It’s not as if the logo is sacred. But only an asshole would do that after a series win.
That same asshole has lost 10 straight to Boston since stomping on Lucky. Schadenfreude, indeed.
How many players in the past 20 (30, 40) years have publicly and explicitly said they would re-sign with a team and then didn't?
It's an extremely rare case--that much seems impossible to deny unless you are just trying to be boringly contrarian.
I could even somewhat look back his statement (which as you note was oddly direct and 100% NOT what pending free agents typically say in that situation) and write it off similar to the Decision with Lebron, were it not for other factors. He was a free agent that left as he certainly had the freedom to do, saying and doing things along the way that were somewhat thoughtless but not enough to kill him over. What is enough to make him persona non grata in Boston forever is him recruiting for his next team during the regular season with the Celtics (as reports that came out later indicated), and he absolutely quit on the team early in the Milwaukee series (shooting .301 from the field over 4 games would make even Anthony Edwards blush). There were other reports of him basically giving everyone the cold shoulder for most of the year, similar to reports in Cleveland.
Who he is off the court is a whole different thing, basically the NBA version of Aaron Rodgers but not as good. One thing I will say in his favor, he just wasn't the reason that the 2019 team failed. Kyrie was an easy scapegoat (especially when they got to the finals immediately before and after) for that. There were lots of reasons and blame could be apportioned different ways, but ultimately a major component of that team being seen as a legit title contender was the assumption that Hayward would return from injury and continue to be the all-star caliber, jack of all trades big wing that every team needs. He just wasn't that in 2019, and no one (definitely not Kyrie) is to blame for Hayward taking a full year to really recover from his injury.
Oh, is that how it happened with Kyrie? Just, like, run of the mill answer to a question, huh?
He has essentially quit on his last two teams, at least one of whom had championship aspirations. Players say a lot of things so I don't care that much about the pledges to the fans but he's clearly incredibly selfish at best.
He has said, and as recently as last week, that someone in his family died that season and he didn't handle it well. I think he's been apologetic about his behavior to the Celtics organization and players. The Boston fans? He's never going to care what they think.
View: https://youtu.be/eed1FTgLI2k?si=_oj5JEFqVka2tebH
That’s how it happens with everyone…maybe not verbstim but never does a new acquisition address a season holder event before ever playing a game and says, “Well let’s see how it goes ok?” No of course not. They are always going to play to the crowd and there really wasn’t even any reason to think that at the time he wasn’t sincere. People change their minds and sour on their job all the time after initially being excited. Big freakin deal. I was as disappointed as anyone that it didn’t work out but it worked out for both parties in the long run.
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I laughed!
(But given my 5th grade sense of humor, that's not necessarily high praise)
That’s a lot of words for “No, no it didn’t.”
But I don’t know, man. Seems like you’re going through an awful lot to defend a guy who is on his third team in four years after demanding trades multiple times, thinks the earth is flat, engages in virus conspiracy theories, promoted an antisemitic movie, and then wouldn’t deny holding those beliefs himself.
You’re probably right that he’s a righteous dude, though.
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Or I just didn’t take his word at a preseason ticket holder event as gospel in a contract year. Not sure what any of that other stuff has to do with basketball. Maybe if he had a daughter he refused to acknowledge he’d be revered around here.
Aren’t you the one who brought up how awesome his Jewish team owner thinks he is?
If KI didn’t handle it well, what was with the stepping on the logo and burning sage?
OTOH, BOS fans should be glad he left - can you imagine what the town would be like if KI was on BOS when all of his refusal to get the vaccine nonsense went down?
"I've dealt with a lot of naysayers and chaos around my name that is untrue" is classic Irving. Everything is someone else's fault; no criticism is warranted based on his words and actions. I am so excited to root against him in this series. Going forward, I am definitely morbidly curious about how long he can keep it together in Dallas.
Anyone sticking up for Kyries tenure in Boston and how he handled it (not bringing in the anti-Semitic or flat earth stuff, just him as a Celtic a player) is leaving out or forgetting multiple things that he did.
he was a disaster as a “leader” and basically threw a playoff series, while talking with others to create a super team elsewhere.
Fuck Kyrie. Boston fans shouldn’t like him.
he was a disaster as a “leader” and basically threw a playoff series, while talking with others to create a super team elsewhere.
Fuck Kyrie. Boston fans shouldn’t like him.
I never really disliked Kyrie that much for the Celtics stuff--he tanked his way out of Boston but whatever, the team wasn't ready to contend with him anyway and in the long run it worked out fine for the Celtics.
I've always found Irving to be overrated, even before LeBron went back to Cleveland, by people who focused on his skillset and ignored his substance. He has never been to me a Top 10 NBA player, and he has been breathlessly talked about as a decisive player in the NBA when he has rarely been that during his career.
I'm more annoyed than anything about the way people have discussed Irving this year as if he has overcome some horrible disease to help lead Dallas to the Finals, as opposed to the reality being that he was an oft-injured asshole for five years who has been healthy and less of an anti-semite this year.
I've always found Irving to be overrated, even before LeBron went back to Cleveland, by people who focused on his skillset and ignored his substance. He has never been to me a Top 10 NBA player, and he has been breathlessly talked about as a decisive player in the NBA when he has rarely been that during his career.
I'm more annoyed than anything about the way people have discussed Irving this year as if he has overcome some horrible disease to help lead Dallas to the Finals, as opposed to the reality being that he was an oft-injured asshole for five years who has been healthy and less of an anti-semite this year.
There were (IMO, overblown) concerns about Jaylen and antisemitism in his support of Kyrie against a suspension. If I didn't find them overblown, I could probably get over them with banner #18.
I mean, I'm Jewish, but I got priorities...
It's a combination of him having flashy skills that attract kids and young people on social media, and also other NBA players and ex-players recognizing the incredible skill that he has. It's one of the reasons I think he holds such much esteem among his peers even though he comes across like an asshole to fans. He's recognized as a savant talent in the way that other, better players, are not.
Not *the* thing, but *a* thing that disappointed me about the Kyrie on the Celtics experience was that he wanted to leave LeBron's shadow to become The Man on another team. So he gets his wish and goes to a team with a young/developing JT and JB, competent starters in Rozier and Horford (pre-mileage building up), Brad Stevens as the coach - a perfect situation. And he failed the leadership challenge as bad as one can, to the point where he was actively recruiting friends to another team. I'm glad he's gone and all, but it will always be a huge bummer that he wanted a specific situation, got it and failing miserably when he got there. Somehow making it worse is him now thriving and being praised for going back to his old role as a sidekick to a player he respects.
It takes very very little to incite sports-hate in me. Peyton Manning has a big potato face and was scummy to a trainer in college, and I maybe admitted last year that he could be kinda funny.
The laundry list of things that Kyrie has done to incite sports-hate is as long as a CVS receipt. Plus, he's done some things that make me actually disdain him as a person. From his previous actions with the Celtics to his many shitty off-court things to the sycophantic discourse surrounding him to the smug, sophomoric bullshit that spills out of his mouth every time he talks, fuck that guy across all space and time.
I hope he gets so embarrassed on the court that he gives up on another team mid-series and Doncic starts doing his barky Doncic face at him. I hope he alienates yet another fanbase so, five years after his retirement, a preponderance of longform articles come out titled some variant of "Kyrie Irving...Actually Kinda Sucked?" I hope Jaylen posterizes him so hard that the announcers laugh at him. I hope he fails in every way imaginable.
The laundry list of things that Kyrie has done to incite sports-hate is as long as a CVS receipt. Plus, he's done some things that make me actually disdain him as a person. From his previous actions with the Celtics to his many shitty off-court things to the sycophantic discourse surrounding him to the smug, sophomoric bullshit that spills out of his mouth every time he talks, fuck that guy across all space and time.
I hope he gets so embarrassed on the court that he gives up on another team mid-series and Doncic starts doing his barky Doncic face at him. I hope he alienates yet another fanbase so, five years after his retirement, a preponderance of longform articles come out titled some variant of "Kyrie Irving...Actually Kinda Sucked?" I hope Jaylen posterizes him so hard that the announcers laugh at him. I hope he fails in every way imaginable.
Not to defend Kyrie at all in this scenario (because I have problems with many of his off-the-court issues) but no one is mentioning that the Celtics team he was joining was completely transformed five minutes into the first game of the season when Gordon Hayward shattered his leg. It's truly one of the biggest sliding doors moments in recent NBA history and I don't see it discussed at all.
Yes, but it's not like the rest of that team was bad. They still took LeBron's Cavs to 7 games in the ECF and maybe Hayward helps them over the hump there. But my point is he gets to Boston, goes to the ECF in his first year and by the same time next year is asking players to join him in Brooklyn. That's pretty abysmal as a leader.
I hate Kyrie, don't get me wrong, and I hate very many of the things he does off the court, as well. At the same time, it doesn't surprise me that some of his teammates like him because I can imagine that he could be a very generous guy. He's done some actually positive things off the court (with his donations to some things). Again, lots and lots of other bad off the court stuff - but he intersperses it with some occasional good things just to be mercurial.
And who threw the pass to Hayward that resulted in a shattered leg and career?
Kyrie.
Haven’t seen someone so destructive since Cousin Oliver.
Honestly, this is THE thing. He wanted to be the man; realized he couldn't be the man; then the next two teams he joined were the Nets with KD, and the Mavs with Luka. C'mon.
Yup. He wanted to be the man and leader of a team. He failed absolutely miserably at both. So bad that he basically (without ever publicly admitting it) gave up on doing it.
Did I say Kyrie has quit the verbal diarreah? I spoke too soon
https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/40271355/kyrie-reflects-celts-tenure-great-reflection-am
https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/40271355/kyrie-reflects-celts-tenure-great-reflection-am
Again, as much as I hate to be fair to Kyrie, but to be fair to Kyrie:
Kyrie was only part of the dysfunction that surrounded the 2018-19 team. There were a lot of guys that needed minutes due to pending free agency or rookie contract issues: Markus Morris, Terry Rozier, even Jaylen Brown. It was a team that went pretty far in the playoffs the prior season without either Kyrie or Hayward, and now those players were being asked to give up minutes to accommodate their returns. Add in the fact that Hayward was really a shell of himself that season (understandably so), and it's clear that Coach Brad Stevens was really in a no-win situation. Probably didn't help that Tatum's name was being openly talked about as the bait to land Larry Fitzgerald.
Ainge made an error by not trading some of that depth the summer of 2018. Of course, with 2 starters returning from injury with imprecise timelines, it was not an ideal situation for Ainge to be making those trades. And Ainge probably should have traded Kyrie at the deadline when it was clear to everyone that he wasn't coming back, but I think he thought the team could bring it together during the playoffs. Instead, the opposite happened, in no small part due to Kyrie.
None of the above should be construed to defend or even explain away Kyrie's attitude towards the team, which basically sucked.
Whenever I read comments from this guy, I have literally no idea what he’s trying to say. He is delusional.
I'm not stepping into V&N here but one of his comments is funny if you google today's news about the new Mavs owner. That's all.
Things took a turn somewhere in the second half of this sentence that lost me
Every Patriots and Celtics offseason at that time was a race to see which player would not come to Boston first. Larry Davis or Anthony Fitzgerald were always the 2 leading candidates.
Actually, those two guys were such unknowns that they definitely would have come to Boston.
It’s not hard once you crack the code. Basically, at every point or chapter of his journey or whatever the fuck we want to call it he claims that he “gets it” now in some kind of spiritual psychic emotional sense whereas in the previous chapter he hadn’t really gotten it yet, but never expresses any real engagement with the fact that he had said the exact same fucking thing before and he’s on like the nth iteration of this and it’s the exact same fucking thing he’s just added more verbiage instead of taking responsibility for things he did in previous moments when he thought he had things and himself figured out.
He wasn't a new acquisition at the time, he had already played a season in Boston. I guess you also missed the part where he doubled down afterwards when there was no crowd to play to by telling the media (and then doing a commercial) about how he wanted to have his number retired in the garden someday.
Yes. Anthony Davis was the unicorn that Ainge was hoping at one point to chase in the 2019 offseason, an event fans and media types were waiting a couple of season to happen. Larry Fitzgerald was the unicorn wide receiver that everyone thought Belichick was going to land, an event fans and media types were convinced was going to happen any day.
I think actually he gets to the foul line and then falls off the edge of it.I laughed!
The guy definitely doesn’t have a word count filter and mixes metaphors like a champ but it’s hard for me to carry a lot of hate.
Everyone is a hero in their own story and we know Kyrie made a mess of a number of situations and wasn’t able to rise to the challenge in Boston. All he is saying is he made mistakes and has grown from the experience. Whatever. That was not a title team anyway.
I think we can appreciate the Tatum quote about how he learned from a superstar dealing with daily media scrutiny.
I expect that has helped him with some mental fortitude both from seeing how Kyrie let it roll off him and when he let it get under his skin.
Tatum is dealing with some bullshit media narrative now. Jaylen as well. And they seem to be handling it ok.
Not absolving Kyrie for his gaffes that put the spotlight on him. But if you’re going to learn about the perils of the media spotlight as a kid in the league, the Kyrie experience def provides a lot of lessons.
So we can be grateful for that.
Everyone is a hero in their own story and we know Kyrie made a mess of a number of situations and wasn’t able to rise to the challenge in Boston. All he is saying is he made mistakes and has grown from the experience. Whatever. That was not a title team anyway.
I think we can appreciate the Tatum quote about how he learned from a superstar dealing with daily media scrutiny.
I expect that has helped him with some mental fortitude both from seeing how Kyrie let it roll off him and when he let it get under his skin.
Tatum is dealing with some bullshit media narrative now. Jaylen as well. And they seem to be handling it ok.
Not absolving Kyrie for his gaffes that put the spotlight on him. But if you’re going to learn about the perils of the media spotlight as a kid in the league, the Kyrie experience def provides a lot of lessons.
So we can be grateful for that.
Pretty decent recap about why Celtics fans don't like Kyrie:
https://www.boston.com/sports/boston-celtics/2024/06/03/why-do-celtics-fans-boo-kyrie-irving-recapping-his-tumultuous-history-with-boston/?p1=hp_secondary
https://www.boston.com/sports/boston-celtics/2024/06/03/why-do-celtics-fans-boo-kyrie-irving-recapping-his-tumultuous-history-with-boston/?p1=hp_secondary