With Kyrie Irving preparing to face off against his former team in Round 1, his dramatic and controversial split from the organization has come back under the spotlight.
Speaking on Uncle Drew’s history with the Cs, Jayson Tatum had this to say:
Jayson Tatum on Kyrie Irving: “Obviously we’ve talked and there’s some things that he told me he wish he could do, would’ve done differently.”
When asked for details, Tatum said he didn’t want to get into that.
Jayson Tatum on Kyrie Irving: "Obviously we've talked and there's some things that he told me he wish he could do, would've done differently."
When asked for details, Tatum said he didn't want to get into that.
— Keith Smith (@KeithSmithNBA) April 13, 2022
Irving played for the Celtics from 2017 to 2019. Originally, things were going well. He was leading them to prosperity and looked to be enjoying his time with the franchise. He even made a verbal commitment to re-sign when his contract expired.
Eventually, things fell apart. For whatever reason, Irving grew cold towards his teammates, calling them out on several occasions for various reasons.
A Celtics player even came out at the time and said Irving was a hard guy to play with.
Long story short, he left the Celtics that summer for Brooklyn, going back on his word and drawing anger from fans.
“For me, it was just about honing on what was important, and that was coming back home,” Irving said, trying to explain why he left. “That was the important staple that I had in my mind, mind you, it took months and months, it almost took a year and some change for me to even come to that decision because nine months ago I was sitting in front of the Boston crowd saying that I wanted to re-sign. And after that, a lot of things happened in my personal life that really changed the landscape of how I felt about the game of basketball and actually playing it in a team environment, and that really affected me as a human being.”
Even after he was gone, he kept taking slights at his former team. After one particularly dominant performance in 2021, he made a point of stomping on the mid-court logo.
Needless to say, his history with the Celtics is deep and complicated and it’s easy to see how he might look back now with shame about how he handled things.
But the time for regret is over now. With Game 1 around the corner, Irving’s focus will be on breaking the hearts of Boston fans again by destroying their team in the playoffs.
For the Celtics, this is the best chance for revenge that there is.
