Will Kyrie Irving be the talk of the NBA Finals?

BOSTON, Massachusetts — It's hard to blame Celtics fans for going there, and Kyrie Irving is no different.

With the NBA Finals looming, and a matchup with the Mavericks — a team that Boston has little to do with because of the Rajon Rondo trade long ago and the departure of Grant Williams last summer — everyone wants to talk about Irving. Will Irving define the Finals? That debate, polite or not, is as important as any question on the court.

Even the always-focused Al Horford gave the Boston crowd a moment at practice on Friday to give his approval for being himself when it came to Irving.

“Our fans care about the Celtics. They care about Boston,” Horford said. CLNS Media/Celtics Blog“When he left, it wasn't an ideal situation for any of us here, so the fans know that. This is the Finals. It's going to be exciting, it's going to be loud, regardless of who's there and who's not. TD Garden is going to be ready. This is the environment we want to play in. This is a big stage. I don't expect anything less from the fans. They're going to be their fans, and that's just the way it is.”

While both sides have accepted the situation going forward, Irving and his former Boston teammates have mostly moved on, though he told Gary Washburn of the Boston Globe and me in March that Celtics fans have a right to boo and that it's part of the game.F Kyrie While the Celtics are celebrating their Eastern Conference Finals victory, and the franchise has bounced back in a big way since Irving's departure, Drew Carter of NBC Sports Boston said during a Garden Report appearance that Dallas currently harbors more animosity toward Kristaps Porzingis than Boston does toward Irving.

One of the sore points left by Irving's (and Horford's) departure was that Boston seemed on its way to near irrelevance by 2021. Irving added fuel to the fire with his stomping on Lackey and his harsh comments about the city and its fans, but what hurt the most was that the Celtics fell short against his Nets, who are now significantly better than Irving's Mavericks.

“Every time we got close, they seemed to make two or three 3-pointers, split them up and get to the free-throw line,” Irving said after Boston's 138-110 win over Dallas in March. “They've shown that all season and over the past few seasons. They've shown how good they are as a team and how well they play for each other.”

The loss marked Irving's 10th straight loss to the Celtics dating back to his time in Brooklyn. Just 13 months earlier, he had suffered a loss that completely shook his faith in the Nets. Boston won 139-96, and despite lengthy comments after the game about how he would do everything in his power to find a way to beat the Celtics, he asked for a trade the next day and never played in another game for Brooklyn.

A shaky transition followed, Dallas missed the playoffs and questions arose about Irving and Luka Doncic's ability to work together. They solved that and made the duo strong enough to lead the Mavericks to the Finals as the fifth seed and resurrect Irving's career.

Photo by Glenn James/NBAE via Getty Images

As Irving left the court in Minnesota with the Western Conference trophy on Thursday, he reflected on how tough it was seven years since the Finals. Looking back over the winter, he said he was in a better place and had put the past behind him.

“There's a lot of attention from the fans. It's been six years. It's expected, it's expected,” Irving said. “The last few matches, I haven't won a single time, so they have a right to continue to boo until I win. That's the theatrics of sports, that's the fun of competitive sports. You have to embrace it.”

Whether and why each fan chooses to heckle Irving will be their choice, especially as the series and the story around it unfolds. It's easy to imagine an older Irving fighting back against the crowd. In the infamous Game 1 of 2022, he yelled at fans in the hallway, gave them the finger multiple times and said he would give them the same energy they gave him. That's long ago now, and it's easy to imagine a series where winning a championship becomes more important as Irving listens to the boos.

Horford expressed that expectation on Friday, saying Joe Mazzulla can be the villain. Mazzulla never got to see Irving face-to-face, joining the 2019-20 season after Irving left, but Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum, who entered the league just before Irving did, have been on the noble path ever since. Tatum shook off the boos at a 2022 game. Brown defended Irving during his suspension last season, and the two players have developed a closer bond since the beginning of their rocky relationship in Boston.

Something as mundane as Irving claiming Brown and Tatum are a credit to the team for where they are today would have been enough to infuriate fans in the past, but Irving has watched and praised them for how they handled his departure, calls to break up and their rise to the top.

“JB is doing great things, JT is doing great things,” he says, “but as a competitor, I want to beat them every time.”

This is no different to any other star on the other side of the Finals anymore, and after his conciliatory comments in March, a shift has finally occurred among Celtics fans, with some expressing a similar desire to move on and some hope that this series won't be all about Kyrie.

If all goes well, Brown and Tatum could end up dominating the league.

“There's been a lot of outside talk about (them) as a duo and how well they'll work together in the future,” Irving said. “Who's going to work better? JB or JT? As a fan of the game, you see and hear all that stuff, but knowing them personally, I think they've handled it extremely well. They're not afraid to get their hands dirty, figuratively speaking, as leaders to go after what they want. They're willing to put their bodies on the line. They're willing to play a lot of games to put the team in a better position going into the season. I give them credit for that. They didn't need any encouragement from me. When I first met them, they were young guys with a hungry mind who wanted to be stars as soon as they got in the league. I think that's what set them apart.”