I swear the more players speak out it just sounds like it was Kyrie vs Brad. I mean for like 4 years it has always looked like it was Brads team until last season.
Agreed.
To be fair I don't think Kyrie intended it to be that way. My sense is that Kyrie just kind of wants to be his own person and not have to change or conform to anybody else, whether it's being a sidekick to LeBron, "playing the game" with the media, or buying into a coach's system and philosophy.
That might be OK on a team with strong leadership already in place. But on the Celts you had a lot of young guys who naturally look to Kyrie as the kind of player they would like to become, at least in terms of success and notoriety. So when Kyrie refused to buy in and show that he placed the team ahead of himself, that sent a message to the younger guys on the team that they shouldn't bother doing that, either.
Add to that the issues with free-agents-to-be Rozier and Morris wanting to show out to get paid and Hayward's slower-than-anticipated integration, and you had a recipe for disaster.
The reason I think it rightfully should fall back on Kyrie is because I think if he had taken a different tack and shown solidarity with Brad from the beginning, the other issues would not have been fatal to the season.