I explicitly acknowledged that there was a window of time in Brooklyn that got quite bad.
Since then, it's been a pretty quiet 2 years. Why do people think he'll get "mercurial" during the WCF?
I'd argue that it's been a quiet one year -- the end of 2022-2023 was a bit of a mess, with Kyrie sitting out of six of the last fifteen games, including the last two, when Dallas tanked and missed the playoffs (something that I still find surprising and sad). That, combined with how his departure from Brooklyn unfolded, doesn't make for a quiet year.
This year, he's admittedly been great. I'm just curious to find out what he does now that he's in the conference finals -- a place he has not been since leaving Cleveland. He shit the bed for the Celts in '19, got injured in '21, swept by Boston in '22 (and got fined $50k for flipping off the fans), and didn't make the playoffs in '18, '20 or '23. How sure can anyone be that he'll be his best self in the WCF? Will he defer to Luka in the Finals if they get there? Or will he have to be the leader, because he's been there before, and hit one of the biggest shots in Finals history?
Others may believe that Kyrie, at long last, has his head on straight. I won't believe it till I see it. He hasn't been tested under the pressure of these last two rounds in seven years. I, for one, wouldn't completely trust him. Of course, as a fan, I'm scarred by his bullshit exit from Boston, including those final four games against the Bucks. That said, it was five years ago... so maybe I'm wrong not to trust the guy. He hasn't given us much reason to, though.