Kyrie Irving has been a polarizing figure in the NBA over the last few years. He is considered to be one of the best point guards in the league thanks to his talent and ability to get buckets at opportune times. Despite this, Irving's teams tend to do better without him on the court and the Brooklyn Nets and Boston Celtics are perfect examples of this. Irving is also known for his frequent mood swings and the inability to get along with teammates. There are already rumors that things are going poorly in Brooklyn many of the behaviors reared their head in Boston.
In a report from The Athletic’s Jay King, Celtics player Marcus Smart spoke out about Irving's troubles and how most of the time, the team was just trying to find common ground with Irving so they could relate to him. In the end, the star point guard closed himself off and it led to a lot of friction.
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“It’s not that we didn’t know how to act (around him),” Smart said. “It’s that we didn’t know how he was going to act. We didn’t know what his moods were and we didn’t know what Kyrie was going through. And that made it tough on us because if somebody’s going through something in their life and you don’t really know what it is, it’s kind of hard to see what’s wrong with him, it’s kind of hard to (provide) some help. It’s not against Kyrie, it’s just a defense mechanism as a human being you have. And he wasn’t here long enough to really be able to open up the way he probably wanted to, and it probably got to him a little bit.”
Kyrie still has plenty of time left in Brooklyn so this whole saga is about to be interesting. We're not even 20 games into the season so if things don't improve, they could spiral out of control fast.
