VERY concerned about Irving's attitude

[max215]

again, it is a long off season and many posters here are making mountains out of molehills.

what if irving has an attitude we dont like?

what if irving leaves in 2 years?

what if irving's legs fall off?

hopefully once the season begins the quality of the threads will improve. 

Equating the first two questions with the last one is pretty ridiculous, and you know it. Irving leaving is a serious concern. Sure, it's well in the future, but we discuss plenty of things that are distant. As for his attitude, there are questions, and pretending otherwise is naive.

[greece66]

@max215

Yes, but what we have known so far is mostly positive. Irving agreed to leave money on the table to get the deal with Boston done. He also preferred Boston among the other candidates: it was reported that the Suns would have included Jackson in their offer if Irving committed verbally to staying there.

[OldSchoolDude]

I get that there is a lot of IT love.  But there were a lot of people on this post myself included who constantly told people that they believed that IT, Crowder, and Bradley were simply placeholders waiting for the real team to come.  We made 11 roster changes this summer. The real team has arrived.  Irving is a flat-out stud.

There were multiple times in the playoffs against us and Golden State that I thought Irving was the best player on the Cavs team.  I believe Irving won Cleveland the Championship the year before last.  He took out Golden State, in my mind he closed our that series on both ends of the Court.  I thought he was the only one keeping Cleveland in the game against Golden State before they finally got beat this year.  I thought LeBron was flat, even though he had greet numbers, I didn't feel he was playing really to his strengths.  But Kyrie was playing his game and keeping the game interesting. 

I watch the entire press conference and I thought that Kyrie spoke well and said good things but really it's just a press conference.  If Tatum can mature physically enough to be an effective power forward and we can draft one of the promising big men in this year's draft whith the Lakers pick our team is looking really really good.

 Crowder was on a great contract but the truth is the Crowder was just really good rotational player.  We are replacing him with Gordon Hayward who is a great player and an All-Star.  People say that Kyrie and IT were statistically the same but Kyrie has shown that he can really step It up and close out in the playoffs and IT has shown that when push comes to shove in the playoff games he can't get it done.  Sure he had that one great game after sister's death and he had that one great game the year before when he put up something like 53, but we have seen him in the playoffs for three years in a row and minus  those two great games, maube add in one more good one, he has not gotten it done. 

We can argue that point all you want and we can agree to disagree or just disagree but there's a really really good chance that physically Thomas is done because of this injury.  If Cleveland ends up not resigning him this trade is basically Crowder the Brooklyn pick zizic and a second-rounder for Kyrie Irving that is a crazy good trade.  Hate on Irving all you want to but I don't believe that Boston was ever going to give Thomas a big money contract not even A-MAX just a big money contract.  I think that if he was still on the roster at the end of the season and he asked Ainge for Evan Turner money Danny would have said no.  There was reports that Ange try to trade him during the Jaylen Brown draft the get it another draft pick.  I think a lot of fans were committed to IT getting a max deal IT staying with Boston but I do not think the Boston Celtics organization saw IT staying on the team at any kind of significant money.  I think that when they drafted him they drafted him to be a sixth man to come off the bench and score light it up like Vinnie Johnson from the Detroit Piston days old but when it broke into the starting lineup a lot of things started to change.  All the talk about the Brinks truck and demanding the max deal really made it impossible for Boston to offer Thomas any kind of deal that was Animax deal.  So Boston had to either trade him or let him go for no value. 

If we hadn't traded the Brooklyn pick to get Kyrie who's an IT replacement then I think that we would have used the Brooklyn pick to get a point guard who's an IT replacement. I think the only way we would have ended up not using that Brooklyn pick or Lakers pick on a point guard to replace IT would be if Marcus Smart showed tremendous Improvement on the offense of side of the ball.  And if Luca Doncic is actually more of a win the player now then a point guard the really only candidate we'd be targeting would be Collin Sexton and I think that Kyrie Irving is better than Sexton and probably will always be better than him.  This was a great trade for Boston.

[hwangjini_1]

again, it is a long off season and many posters here are making mountains out of molehills.

what if irving has an attitude we dont like?

what if irving leaves in 2 years?

what if irving's legs fall off?

hopefully once the season begins the quality of the threads will improve. 

Equating the first two questions with the last one is pretty ridiculous, and you know it. Irving leaving is a serious concern. Sure, it's well in the future, but we discuss plenty of things that are distant. As for his attitude, there are questions, and pretending otherwise is naive.

why yes, i do know it. hence the humor. 

[nickagneta]

I was concerned before the trade and said if Danny was going to make the trade he would have to do his due diligence and investigate what type of person and team mate Kyrie was. Was Kyrie's asking to be traded, his game on the court, his intelligence, his work ethic, his demeanor around others and his attitude bad or good?

It turns out I read an article that said Ainge and the Celtics did just that. The Cs said they were good with the type of person and player Kyrie is. So, I am good with his attitude until while he is here he gives me a reason to think otherwise.

How is it possible to investigate a player you have some concerns about without tampering ?

Ask Cavs execs ? What do you think they are going to say given their need to unload Irving?

Ask around the league ? Different people have different agendas and levels of inside knowledge.

Talk To Coach K ? Pleeeeeeeeeeease

Talk to players ? Maybe, but it would be awkward, borderline impossible to talk to current Cleveland teammates and who knows what their motives would be. A player who hated him might give a glowing report to expedite a trade.

You really think a huge business like the Boston Celtics traded for a star like Irving without doing everything possible to find out what type of person, team mate and player he was? What, they simply looked at his stats and you tube highlights and decided that was all they needed to know about the man? Lol...that's hilarious.

In business information is money. I am sure Cleveland allowed Boston to talk to people under the assurance of not filing tampering charges. Irving, Lue, trainers, maybe players were talked to. My guess is Ainge called David Blatt and Mike Brown. Ainge let it out that they did their homework on Irving. I am positive that is true.

[max215]

@max215

Yes, but what we have known so far is mostly positive. Irving agreed to leave money on the table to get the deal with Boston done. He also preferred Boston among the other candidates: it was reported that the Suns would have included Jackson in their offer if Irving committed verbally to staying there.

Yes, there are reasons to believe he's committed long-term, but there are also very serious questions. Frankly, we don't even know what Kyrie considers an optimal situation. Clearly, his top priorities are not winning and money, which will likely be our two advantages in his free agency, and if he doesn't achieve his nebulous goal of "maximizing his personal potential," then one would have to imagine he'd be a pretty significant flight risk. I'm not saying we should start to freak out about the possibility of Irving leaving now, but dismissing it as something not worth talking about is extremely unreasonable, and that's all I took issue with.

[Dino Pitino]

Sure he had that one great game after sister's death and he had that one great game the year before when he put up something like 53, but we have seen him in the playoffs for three years in a row and minus  those two great games, maube add in one more good one, he has not gotten it done. 

He had that 53 game this year, too. The previous two years he was harassed and hounded into near irrelevance by Atlanta and Cleveland. Because he's tiny.

TP for your post.

[Roy H.]

Sure he had that one great game after sister's death and he had that one great game the year before when he put up something like 53, but we have seen him in the playoffs for three years in a row and minus  those two great games, maube add in one more good one, he has not gotten it done. 

He had that 53 game this year, too. The previous two years he was harassed and hounded into near irrelevance by Atlanta and Cleveland. Because he's tiny.

TP for your post.

For the record: Thomas scored 2.6 less points per game than Kyrie this postseason, on 3.2 fewer shots. IT also averaged 1.4 more assists, meaning he actually created more points despite playing fewer minutes. That's despite personal tragedy, getting his teeth knocked out, and playing through serious injury.

[CelticsJG]

Extremely well-spoken?!  Here's a transcript of his first comment.  I didn't omit any words, but it reads as though I have.  He has an almost Trump-like quality to his speech, darting from one idea to another, omitting words seemingly at random, mixing idioms and inventing new uses for words.

He speaks into the microphone.  He's audible.  He enunciates and you can identify the words that come out of his mouth.  The words don't form coherent sentences.  Is that our standard for "extremely well-spoken"?

Thank god someone else noticed. He's somehow both eloquent and incoherent at the same time. Bits of eloquence incoherently pieced together.

Classic characteristic of a dumb person trying to sound sophisticated.

Want Kyrie to shut up and just play basketball huh?

[tarheelsxxiii]

Sure he had that one great game after sister's death and he had that one great game the year before when he put up something like 53, but we have seen him in the playoffs for three years in a row and minus  those two great games, maube add in one more good one, he has not gotten it done. 

He had that 53 game this year, too. The previous two years he was harassed and hounded into near irrelevance by Atlanta and Cleveland. Because he's tiny.

TP for your post.

For the record: Thomas scored 2.6 less points per game than Kyrie this postseason, on 3.2 fewer shots. IT also averaged 1.4 more assists, meaning he actually created more points despite playing fewer minutes. That's despite personal tragedy, getting his teeth knocked out, and playing through serious injury.

Roy has crushed the IT vs. Kyrie debate.

[flybono]

WGAF what he said.. Last i checked the experts have him rated as a Top 10 Player in this League....

What more do you want?

[PickNRoll]

Sure he had that one great game after sister's death and he had that one great game the year before when he put up something like 53, but we have seen him in the playoffs for three years in a row and minus  those two great games, maube add in one more good one, he has not gotten it done. 

He had that 53 game this year, too. The previous two years he was harassed and hounded into near irrelevance by Atlanta and Cleveland. Because he's tiny.

TP for your post.

For the record: Thomas scored 2.6 less points per game than Kyrie this postseason, on 3.2 fewer shots. IT also averaged 1.4 more assists, meaning he actually created more points despite playing fewer minutes. That's despite personal tragedy, getting his teeth knocked out, and playing through serious injury.

Unlikely that will ever happen again.  That's why the trade was a no-brainer (along with contract considerations).

[BringToughnessBack]

It is hard for anyone to compare IT performance in playoffs when he went through tragedy as well as being the number option in an offense without any clutch shooters to Kyrie's offense where he was the number 2/3 option behind the main scoring threat, Lebron.

We will see how Kyrie does over the next few years but my hunch is that if he was on the our team last year and IT was not, he too, would have been close to 30 per game and more assists as well.

Both players are great. Lets leave it at that and any great player without some sort of attitude is a rare find. Bird, Jordan and Magic had serious attitudes!

[Big333223]

It is hard for anyone to compare IT performance in playoffs when he went through tragedy as well as being the number option in an offense without any clutch shooters to Kyrie's offense where he was the number 2/3 option behind the main scoring threat, Lebron.

We will see how Kyrie does over the next few years but my hunch is that if he was on the our team last year and IT was not, he too, would have been close to 30 per game and more assists as well.

Both players are great. Lets leave it at that and any great player without some sort of attitude is a rare find. Bird, Jordan and Magic had serious attitudes!

I have a hunch your hunch is correct. Which speaks to the problem with all of this statistical comparison of Kyrie and IT. The two had different roles in different systems with vastly different teammates. Putting their numbers side by side and pretending those differences don't affect what we're likely to see from the two players in the coming years is a mistake.

[green_bballers13]

Sure he had that one great game after sister's death and he had that one great game the year before when he put up something like 53, but we have seen him in the playoffs for three years in a row and minus  those two great games, maube add in one more good one, he has not gotten it done. 

He had that 53 game this year, too. The previous two years he was harassed and hounded into near irrelevance by Atlanta and Cleveland. Because he's tiny.

TP for your post.

For the record: Thomas scored 2.6 less points per game than Kyrie this postseason, on 3.2 fewer shots. IT also averaged 1.4 more assists, meaning he actually created more points despite playing fewer minutes. That's despite personal tragedy, getting his teeth knocked out, and playing through serious injury.

Roy has crushed the IT vs. Kyrie debate.

Yeah, IT was better than Kyrie last year. IT was better than all but 4 other players last year per MVP voting. The whole IT vs Kyrie comparison last year doesn't favor the Celtics. Fortunately, the trade favors the Celtics future at PG. Hopefully they still land a top pick in either 18 or 19 to make the BKN pick loss hurt less. They could really use another talented young big man.

Re: Kyrie's attitude- I love it. They need a guy that will drive and score at will. He wanted the stage to be an alpha male, and now he's got it. We will see if he can deliver this year.

Also, the Uncle Drew cuts are funny: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGYsO8rcIUo

I think he's going to be a likeable player here in Boston. As likeable as IT? Probably not, but who would be?