As an outsider, I for one thought you all were fools (Not you all, but the front office) for trading away the vets for unknowns. However, Kyrie helped groomed those unknowns to contenders.
Somewhere along the line, the students decided they were better than the teacher. Egos emerged and players started to think they were better than they were, they started to think money.
With Gordon and Kyrie down, the young guys figured "We don't need em, made it this far without em." Forgetting Kyrie helped groom them and get those guys to the level they are at during year one.
While Kyrie didn't win anything, how is he any different than any other star who got bounced in the playoffs the last 2 years?
The Kyrie experiment was a failure. Objectively, Brad is to blame for not checking the young guys, and Ainge for not trading them for AD when he had the chance.
Nothing significant was accomplished, team wise. Statistically, he was the most efficient he has ever been. In the conversation with Bird, stat wise in terms of efficacy.
He couldn't have traded the young guys for AD when he had the chance, because of Kyrie and the Rose Rule. In that sense yes the Kyrie experiment failed to allow us to trade for AD at the time he became available.
I do agree to a point about the students thinking they got better than the teacher and setting their sights on getting paid after making the ECF. Can't really blame them, they're 21year old kids that ended up a quarter away from toppling LeBum and his cobbled together Cavs team in the ECF in 2018. Nobody on the team is going to say "oh we didn't really deserve to make it, it's a weak East". Nobody complained about Kyrie's leadership on the court while we were getting the No.2 seed. Nobody complained about Kyrie being a **** in the media in 2018. He didn't make any outrageous statements, in fact he apologized for calling the earth flat, and went out of his way to praise the team and the young guys. Tried to make a verbal commitment to us early when he didn't have to (which backfired on him also).
It wasn't till Gordon came back, the team was slow out of the gate at 10-10 while he floundered in the starting lineup, Brown struggled in the opening lineup as well, and both got benched for Mook and Smart that the drama started. Kyrie started criticizing them after losses and the fans started criticizing the team. The criticism generally had a "you guys don't have the experience, only I have the experience to win a championship and you have to make sacrifices" tone. Why the criticism in 2019 and not in 2018? It's not hard to imagine the team listening to him back in 2018, being happy because they were getting more minutes, more time in the limelight because of Gordon's injury, then moping and sulking because those minutes got taken away after success. And Kyrie felt the pressure, because the main currency he was using to influence the young guys was "I've been there, follow me". Bit hard when they almost got there without you.
I have sympathy for Kyrie because sometimes I think the evaluation of him on this forum doesn't take into account his whole body of work, which includes our season of 2017-18. If we're going to criticize him for failing to lead, failing to lift his game when we needed him to, and torpedoing our efforts in 2019, and rightly so, we should acknowledge that his contribution to getting a 2nd seed, which gave us home ground advantage throughout the playoffs in 2018.
Kyrie's failure was his failure to lead and take the team to great heights and meet the expectations after 2018. Statistically he had I think the best season of his career, most assists, best efficiency. Just couldn't get it done when it counted, and that's all fans ultimately care about. But he's hardly to blame for the whole season - this is an organizational failure on multiple levels. If we think it's going to be all better because he's bailed out and the cancer's gone that would be shortsighted. There's players who will still be on this team and organization this coming year that bear some responsibility for what happened last season. Hopefully this summer is a chance for them to look in the mirror and accept responsibility for their roles in what happened, and work to be better for the team in the future. Only then will we be better going forward.
You are missing one point..... the fans love the Boston Celtics over and above any individual player. Kyrie's problem with the fans really started when he turned his back on the Celtics. If he had maintained his promise to re-sign with the Celtics the fans would have supported him over the younger players.
This is a good point, TP. I made it in my first post in this thread - it's the feeling of rejection that hurts. We're the Celtics, we don't like players rejecting our team, they should feel privileged to play for the team. It's interesting to notice that (and I'm only basing this on checking those fan forums during the year and the trade deadline) GS fans and Toronto fans didn't respond to KD and Kawhi's non-commitments through the year with the same resentment that we did (or maybe they did and I just missed it), when in actual fact Kyrie went further than either of those free agents in making a commitment.
When Kyrie failed to reinforce his commitment to us at the trade deadline after getting grilled by media in the wake of the AD trade demand and said "ask me July 1" that was probably the tipping point for people to think "oh he's going to bail on us and he hasn't even achieved anything for us yet" and then, like any relationship that's going south, every little thing he did started to irritate. He dribbled the ball too much. He didn't pass it to Hayward. He made stupid statements to the media. He hogged the ball too much. He criticized his teammates too much why can't he just shut up?
In a way it's the weight of our history. If players seem lukewarm on playing here, or they don't buy into our culture, or don't see wearing green as a privilege, they're not going to be too popular. But despite all that, I think fans would have overlooked all those faults - if Kyrie had succeeded in leading us to a championship. Winning papers over any faults. Unfortunately for him he didn't and that's the legacy he will leave Boston with.
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Topic: The Kyrie Irving free agency thread(to sign 4yr/$141M w/Nets page 105) (Read 147725 times)