Kyrie Irving has had a very interesting 2018-19 season, as have the Celtics who have ridden the roller coaster of the regular season through a number of ups and downs.
Right now, the Celtics are trending upwards as is Irving, and after a recent blowout win over LeBron James and the Lakers, Irving was feeling introspective and a bit contrite. The Celtics’ star guard has had a rough go of it with the media this season, expressing frustration about speculation over his impending free agency and how his comments have led to questions about the internal relationships he has with his Celtics teammates, particularly the young players.
Irving has taken pages out of the LeBron playbook by trying to motivate his young teammates with public critiques, but that hasn’t gone over especially well. In a recent talk with Yahoo Sports’ Chris Haynes, Irving offered an apology for how he’s handled things this season, both with regards to his young teammates and bristling at the media at times, but also noted that he still feels like there’s too much made out of perceived drama in the NBA.
The many quotes from Irving in Haynes’ piece are interesting, but the part that stood out the most wasn’t his admission that he’s approached some things poorly this season. Instead, it was his perspective on coming into the league in LeBron’s shadow and dealing with not feeling like he was getting the credit he deserved for taking the steps towards being a star, because of constant comparisons to James, and how he didn’t want to have that impact on his younger teammates.
“Coming into this league, it’s been trial and error. Just from being a rookie and having to ‘quote-unquote’ fill the shoes of LeBron,” he told Yahoo Sports. “That was a lot for a 19-year-old kid to be coming into a city like Cleveland where something traumatic like that happens where their hometown kid leaves to go win championships [with Miami]. And here I am, this rookie. Our first year, we lost 26 or 28 in a row and I have to fulfill my own legacy. It was always like I was being compared or I had to live up to someone else’s standards, and I felt like I wanted to go after my own dreams, get my own things. And everything that every great player hit, in terms of great players that came before me, I was hitting. I made the All-NBA Rookie Team, I won the MVP of the rookie-sophomore game, I was leading my draft class in everything.
“I kept getting better every single year. My second year, I went to averaging 22 points and I made my first All-Star Game. I kept hitting every single mark since I was 19. And now that I think of it, I’m in a position where I have a greatness about my game and I don’t ever want that to overshadow the great young players that I’m playing with because it’s a hard thing to accept. You basically have to wait your turn and be patient in this league to be that guy and to earn that right. And I feel like I’ve earned that right thus far.”
For all of Irving’s quirks and, at times, maddening wokeness, he can be as candid and honest a player as there is in the league when discussing his feelings and past. This, as much as anything he’s said in the past few years, explains why he left Cleveland and why he struggles as much as he does with balancing being a veteran leader trying to motivate his young teammates while also empathizing with the position they’re in.
It’s why he sometimes tries to be LeBron, exuding confidence that the Celtics will be fine merely due to his presence. It’s also why he seems uneasy to do so all the time, because he remembers the frustrations he had at that age as a budding star dealing with a superstar that (maybe correctly) insisted he had all the answers. Irving even toes that line in this statement. He talks about needing to earn the position he’s in by taking all those steps to get to superstar status, but also insists he doesn’t want to overshadow the young guys who are on that journey now because he knows how frustrating it can be.
