Kyrie Irving has had a phenomenal career. He won a championship in Cleveland, and he hit one of the most clutch shots of all time to clinch it. He’s a nine-time All-Star, three-time All-NBA player, and is widely considered by his peers to have the deepest bag in the game. He’s played for four teams in total, but if there’s one stop that just flat-out didn’t work in his career, it was the two years he spent in Boston as a member of the Celtics.
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Kyrie came to Beantown as part of a shocking trade that shook up the league. The Celtics and Cavs had finished 1-2 in the 2016-17 Eastern Conference standings, then Cleveland had beaten Boston in the conference finals. In the offseason, the Cavs sent Kyrie to Boston for Isaiah Thomas, Jae Crowder, Ante Zizic and a first-round pick.
For a variety of reasons, Kyrie and the league’s most storied franchise never jelled. Celtics fans are still sore at him to this day after he left in free agency, a move made worse by him publicly saying that he planned to re-sign with the team before ultimately jumping ship.
Kyrie had former Celtics teammate Jaylen Brown on his 24-hour livestream, and while the two had some fun playing NBA2K, they also spilled some tea on their two years together.
“What’s crazy is we almost fought one time,” Brown revealed. “I remember like it was yesterday. I come to practice, and I don’t even know what’s going on. We haven’t heard from Kyrie, I hadn’t heard his voice in two weeks.”
“I definitely used to get silent, bro. I didn’t know how to express myself,” Kyrie interjected.
“I don’t know what was going on, but you decided you needed to have a hard time with everybody,” Brown continued. “So you confronted me. I remember we were standing under the basket, and then you came up to me and was like, ‘I know who you are.’ So I’m like, ‘That’s great, ’cause I know who I am too.’ You’re like, ‘No you don’t.'”
Brown laughed about the strange interaction now, but Kyrie explained it by saying that he was going through some difficult personal things. “It was almost an overflow of emotion that I was dealing with, bro. I told you, I lost my grandfather that year, I was supposed to sign back for five years, I announced it, and then my grandfather passed a week later.”
“After I left the team and went to his funeral, bro I didn’t even take any time off to grieve. Like no time off, I just went straight into the game, so being around y’all didn’t feel like I was having fun. It wasn’t y’all fault, it was me.”
The two All-Stars have clearly put their beef behind them, even if the Celtics faithful haven’t. Kyrie was showered with deafening boos when the Mavs visited TD Garden in the 2024 NBA Finals, and knowing Boston fans, he’ll almost surely receive the same treatment for the rest of his career.
