Having assumed a leadership role in Boston after playing second fiddle to LeBron James for years in Cleveland, Kyrie Irving has made a handful of eyebrow-raising comments to the media this season. Over the last several months, Irving has called out his younger teammates, expressed the need for a 15-year veteran in the locker room, and walked back a preseason promise to re-sign with the Celtics.
Looking back on the season in a conversation with Chris Haynes of Yahoo Sports, Irving admitted that he hasn’t always taken the best approach in his attempts to set an example for his teammates and get the Celtics on the right track.
“The way I’ve handled things, it hasn’t been perfect,” Irving said. “I’ve made a lot of mistakes that I take full responsibility for. I apologize. I haven’t done it perfectly. I haven’t said the right things all the time. I don’t want to sit on a place like I’m on a pedestal from anybody. I’m a normal human being that makes mistakes. For me, I think because of how fixated I was on trying to prove other people wrong, I got into a lot of habits that were bad, like reading stuff and reacting emotionally. That’s just not who I am.”
It has been an up-and-down season in Boston, and many of Irving’s most noteworthy comments have come after bad Celtics losses. However, with the club seemingly at a low point after losing for the fifth time in six games last Sunday, a cross-country flight to California provided an opportunity for the team to reset and bond, as Jay King of The Athletic details.
While it’s not clear if Irving offered a similar mea culpa to his teammates on that flight, King writes that the star point guard helped improve the mood surrounding the club by playing music, card games, and dice games during the trip to the Bay Area. Head coach Brad Stevens, Irving, and several other members of the club have pointed to that trip as a positive turning point for the Celtics, who have since won road games over the Warriors, Kings, and Lakers.
“It’s a long flight across the country, everybody’s getting their headphones on or whatever,” Al Horford said, per King. “And (Irving) just started talking, and then he was like, ‘Hey, let’s play cards.’ And we just got to talking. I just think that his energy in all that, that kind of brought us together as a group. And that carried over to that practice the next day in San Francisco, which I thought was a really good one, and then that shootaround before the game was really good as well, really focused. But it all started with the plane ride.”
Of course, there’s no guarantee that the recent good vibes surrounding the Celtics will continue all season, or that they’ll translate to postseason success. But for now, at least, the energy around the club seems more positive — even if Irving made it clear that some of his complaints about how the media manufactures drama still stand.
“I just want to make sure this locker room understands who I am and what I represent,” Irving told Haynes. “I’m trying to make sure that they set a great example for young players that are coming after them as well. Like I said, I haven’t said the right things and done all the right things, and I don’t ever want to compare myself to perfection. But I can tell that I’m definitely learning from the older players, the players that are my age and the younger players on how to deal with the evolution of just media. It’s a platform now, it’s an entire industry that bothers a lot of people, entertainers, athletes.
“… This is the responsibility that I have. I’m done complaining about it. I have feelings about it, but I’m not going keep badgering the media, keep badgering other people, keep badgering this or that. It’s about moving forward and keeping my sanctuary as safe as possible. As long as I go out there and handle my business, I don’t have anything else to worry about. As long as I go out there and do my thing and make sure my teammates are playing well and their spirits are right, I’m doing my job.”
Ed Davis