BOSTON — At the very least, the 2024 NBA Finals has become a long period for Kyrie Irving to reflect on his time with the Celtics.
And on Sunday, the day before Boston beat Irving's Dallas Mavericks to win their 18th championship, Irving said he didn't believe in the Celtics' tradition and culture when he arrived from Cleveland in the summer of 2017. He called it “a cult here” and said he made a mistake because “you have to show respect here.”
“What they expect from you as a player is to embrace the Celtics pride and believe in what the Celtics are all about, and if you don't, you get kicked out,” Irving said. “I'm one of those guys who got kicked out. … I did it to myself. They don't welcome me back.”
Game 5 will be played Monday at 8:30pm ET in Boston.
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A matchup against Irving's former team in the Finals has been one of several good subplots in this series, but for the most part, things haven't gone well for Irving, averaging 21.0 points and shooting poorly while the Mavericks were down 3-1.
Meanwhile, Irving scored 35 points in a narrow Game 3 loss, helping his Mavericks snap his personal streak of 13 straight losses to the Celtics since he left Boston.
Now, with the series returning to TD Garden, Irving knows he'll hear the “Kyrie sucks” chants that erupted from the stands during Games 1 and 2 of the Finals. He acknowledged the taunts were a distraction.
“When the fans are yelling, 'Kyrie's no good,' it feels like they have a psychological advantage, and rightly so,” said Irving, who shot 13 of 37 in the first two Finals games in Boston. “If I don't make a shot or I turn the ball over, it makes it even more pressing and they keep blaming me. So I think it's just as important to silence any doubt from the crowd or even any self-doubt when I make or miss a shot.”
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Boston fans boo former star, Kyrie Irving's return is different
The reason why the Boston crowd heckled Kyrie dates back to the last of Irving's two seasons with the Celtics. He initially said he would sign a long-term contract, then clashed with teammates and coaching staff, retracted his promise, and left the team as a free agent after missing the playoffs. Then, when he returned to Boston as part of the Brooklyn Nets, he burned sage to “cleanse the energy” in the arena. This, too, was not well received by the local fans.
Irving said he “had to come to terms with” some of the choices he'd made in his life, but that doing so led to him suffering from “depression, anxiety and other mental health issues.”
But Irving also blamed his misbehavior in Boston on a trade he also requested from Cleveland, though he didn't specifically ask to be moved to the Celtics.
“It wasn't an option for me, it wasn't at the top of my list,” Irving said, “so when the trade opportunity was presented to me, rather than looking back at the Celtics' history and evaluating it, I just went in with an open mind and was like, OK, I'll just go with the flow. But I think that was the wrong approach.”
Irving specifically said he should have celebrated the team's 17 championships and the people still living and connected to the team who were instrumental in those championships. He repeated what he's been saying for nearly two weeks: That at age 32, he's learned from his ups and downs from his trade request in Cleveland to joining the Mavericks last year, and that he realized he wasn't in a position to live up to the expectations placed on him during his time with the Celtics.
“That's what I was talking about, in terms of accepting (his) choice,” Irving said, “but looking back, I should have shown more respect and taken more guidance from some of the guys who were with the Boston Celtics before me to explain to me what the pressure was.”
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(Photo by Maddie Meyer/Getty Images)
