Kyrie Irving is great, but in this series he has to be better than this

BOSTON -- Kyrie Irving has long since established himself as one of the game’s premier players, a perennial All-NBA selection. 

But he has to be better; better than what we’ve seen thus far in this second-round series against the Milwaukee Bucks, who now have a 2-1 series lead following their 123-116 Game 3 win on Friday night. 

Irving led the Celtics with 29 points, but did so on 8-for-22 shooting. 

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And that shooting performance was actually an improvement upon his Game 2 struggles when he had nine points and was 4-for-18 from the field and that game, like Game 3, also ended in a Celtics loss. 

Irving spent the early portion of his postgame press conference Friday making note of the free throw discrepancy and how Giannis Antetokounmpo spending most of the game at the free throw line was “slowing the [expletive] game down.”

But here’s the thing. 

Yes, Antetokounmpo got a slew of favorable calls and yes, it was very much a factor in the outcome and made the game drag on for longer than it needed to. 

Still, a bigger contributor to Boston's losses in Games 2 and 3 has been Irving’s inability to make the shots that he spent an entire regular season knocking down with regularity. 

Is it wrong to put the brunt of the team’s struggles on the shoulders of Irving? 

Yup.

But you know what?

As the leader of this team, the player whose performance will either pave a path towards success or lead to a dead end, this is what he signed up for when he told Cleveland’s front office that he wanted out. 

He inherited a team that already knew what it was like to make a semi-deep playoff run but was lacking a closer to get them over the hump. 

That closer is supposed to be Irving. 

But so far in this series, Irving has not brought the Celtics any closer to winning this series, which would put them back in the Eastern Conference finals for the third year in a row. 

And we talk about his ability to impact the games in many areas, something all the greats are capable of doing. 

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But Irving has a special gift for scoring in a variety of ways. 

However, it’s only going to be of great benefit to the Celtics if he can do so in a relatively efficient manner. 

Shooting 30 percent from the field (12-for-40) in the past two games?

That ain’t gonna cut it, especially when no one has stepped up and established themselves as a viable No. 2 option who can upon occasion step up and carry the team, akin to what we’ve seen from Khris Middleton or on Friday night, George Hill and Pat Connaughton who had 21 and 14 points for the Bucks.

“We’ll be better,” Irving said. “We’ll need a little bit more from our bench, a little bit more consistency from me going to the basket as well as the 3-point line and hopefully we can even out the free throws and not just in the fourth quarter. 

The Bucks wound up taking four more free throws (36-32) than the Celtics, but Boston won the free throw war in the fourth quarter with 16 attempts compared to 11 for the Bucks. 

While free throws certainly played a part in the game’s outcome, Irving’s inability to make the most of his scoring opportunities was an even bigger factor. 

But none of that matters now. 

The bottom line is clear.

The Celtics' season is on the brink of extinction if they lose on Monday. 

And while there are a ton of factors that have to come into play for Boston to win, there’s one that stands head and shoulders above all others. 

Kyrie Irving has to be better. 

Period.
 

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