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Kyrie Irving must lead Celtics through a disaster in search for happiness
Maddie Meyer/Getty Images

Kyrie Irving must lead Celtics through a disaster in search for happiness

Kyrie Irving set a back screen on Jae Crowder then caught the ball at the top of the key off a curl from a screen set by Jaylen Brown. With Derrick Rose trailing the driving Irving and LeBron James sliding over to help, Irving lofted a floater over the late-arriving James and scored the first two points of the 2017-18 NBA season. Irving began the night with a bucket over James and end the night with a multitude of questions about the future of his new team.

For the Celtics, this is worst case scenario. You bring in a highly sought after free agent in the offseason and trade for one of the most talented point guards on the planet to improve on a team that finished with the best record in the Eastern Conference and made the Conference Finals a year ago. On Opening Night, halfway through the first quarter, you lose that sought-after free agent to a gruesome leg injury and end up losing your first two games of the season because of monster games from James and Giannis Antetokounmpo.

The Celtics, after the first two nights of NBA action, find themselves under a canopy of despair, looking up wondering where they go from here. Conventional wisdom suggests that they remain patient. It’s impossible to forecast the storm of injuries that hit every team, nor is it possible to predict the severity. Draymond Green went down with a knee injury the same night Hayward went down. Jeremy Lin was lost for the season the following night. Teams lose their sense of identity, even their sense of direction, when they allow themselves to get caught up in what they can’t control.

It’s an objective disastrous start to the season, but this is ostensibly what Irving wanted: an opportunity to forge his own legacy sans one of the three greatest players of all time. No one could have expected the powers that be to thrust Irving into a situation where he must simultaneously learn how to lead while teaching his supporting cast how to win through adversity.

We’ve seen him at his best, and the experience of watching his peaks are nearly transformative. Those peaks, however, were rarely him rising above expectations, but merely seizing moments to let us know what our expectations of Irving should be. We have a clear understanding of what his supreme handle means in an era where point guards use speed instead of craft to get by defenders. But what Irving does with his handle, and more importantly, his vision, is going to decide the fate of the 2018 Celtics.

When we talk about Irving’s vision, we’re not necessarily referring to his ability to find cutting teammates in Brad Stevens’ offense, but how he sees the immediate future of this team. Irving witnessed first hand how the most dire of circumstances can force the best in us to come alive – he has a championship ring because of it. There are possibilities contained in calamity, but it takes a willingness to mature as a basketball player to see them.


Cleveland Cavaliers guard Derrick Rose challenges Irving for the ball during as Irving returned the Q on the opening night of the 2017-2018 NBA season.  Ken Blaze-USA TODAY Sports

We saw hints of Irving’s maturity as he answered an avalanche of questions about why he wanted to leave Cleveland. He rarely took direct shots at the city, and took zero direct shots at his teammates, namely James. There was a lot to be read between the lines, but the primary focus of his answers revolved around what he wanted for himself, and how he feels he can fulfill those career and personal aspirations in Boston.

In an interview with "First Take," Irving told Stephen A. Smith, “I felt like when I was coming into that environment, there were times when my energy was just a little off. And I just had to figure that out. There were times when after games I would go out and shoot. As any professional athlete or any person knows when you’re at your workplace and you have those tough days, there are questions that you ask yourself: Is this the right thing for me right now? And I answered that question for me myself.”

This introspective existentialism led to his trade to Boston, but he has to think much larger and beyond himself to keep the Celtics in contention to compete for the conference title. There is still talent up and down the roster, and Stevens remains one of the NBA’s best young minds. Al Horford will work alongside Irving in helping lead this team through the unimaginable circumstance they’ve been dealt, but the overwhelming majority of responsibility lies on the shoulders of Irving, largely because he asked for it.

His her book Hope In The Dark, Rebecca Solnit speaks about how humanity at large responds to disaster when she writes, “But people return to those selves, those ways of self-organizing, as if by instinct when the situation demands it. Thus a disaster is a lot like a revolution when it comes to disruption and improvisation, to new roles and an unnerving or exhilarating sense that now anything is possible.”

In Boston, the ethos of ‘anything is possible’ was born when Kevin Garnett screamed it after winning its first title in 22 years. The end of this season would be the 10-year anniversary of that fateful title over the Lakers in 2008. While the odds are stacked against these Celtics with Hayward down indefinitely, Irving could cement his place in the NBA’s cannon by proving everything he said he was capable of – or at least wanted to see if he was capable of – by asking to leave Cleveland.

We do not know yet whether this team has the gall to take on the storm head on, but we do know that it’ll take on the personality of its new leader. Irving sought out to find happiness, but 2018 has turned into an opportunity to deliver just that to a new city.

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