Kyrie Irving talks about his interactions with Celtics fans during game 1 of playoff series.
Here's something Celtics fans haven't gotten to say often: Kyrie Irving is delivering.
Honestly, I like Kyrie more after he flipped off Celtics fans and dropped his lower-body catchphrase on them Sunday. He's playing the role of villain in a more entertaining way than we've ever seen.
What other sports villain will actually meet the fans' level of pettiness? A-Rod didn't flip off Fenway Park. Eli Manning didn't tell Patriots fans to suck it.
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Rivalries aren't as fun when they're one-sided. If the Kyrie-Boston relationship was limited to fans screaming at him, it would be boring and quite possibly insufferable. If it affected Kyrie on the court, it would eventually feel antagonistic on Boston's end. But it doesn't. It's just two sides more than willing to give each other [crap].
Celtics fans and Kyrie Irving appreciate each other. Not “appreciate” in a Kyrie-celebrates-National-Boston-Celtics-Fans-Appreciation-Day kind of way, but in the literal sense: to understand. Everyone knows what he did and how Boston took it. They don't like him and he doesn't like them.
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What makes it more interesting is that both sides are irrational. Fans are expected to be nuts and Celtics lovers fit the bill. They're obsessed with Kyrie.
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And from a pure chaos standpoint, there’s nobody like Kyrie in the NBA. He’s a genius player (correctly self-proclaimed) whose other proclamations can be pointed, inconsistent and confusing all at once.
Kyrie always wants things on his own terms. Yet for someone who often zigs when everyone else zags, isn't telling off someone who tells you off the most relatable thing he's done? If anyone should respect that -- especially considering he did it while dropping a cool 39 points -- isn't it Boston fans?
We've seen Kyrie at his most perplexing. Lectures, long Instagram posts, cryptic messages. A lot of that stuff confuses people and/or doesn't make sense. Even a dummy like me understands what someone's trying to say when they tell someone to [redacted] their [redacted].
Celtics fans should cherish Kyrie's flipping them off after hitting a three. It's the whole don't-dish-it-out-if-you-can't-take-it thing, and "don't dish it out" seems to be a non-starter.
What we're experiencing now is the height of the Kyrie-Boston saga. Heading into the series, an easy national view was that Celtics fans should get over the whole Kyrie thing. He left. It's over. Who cares if he stepped on the fun little leprechaun man?
That's out the window because the answer is that Kyrie cares. It's safe to say that Boston is in his head, but he's also too mentally strong a player to actually have it affect his game. And with neither side crossing any real line (let's keep the water bottles to ourselves), nobody's ultimately getting hurt.
This wouldn't be as fun if Kyrie weren't so good, or if he just took it. To borrow his phrasing, he's giving them the energy they're giving him. As consumers, we're all better off for it.
Note: Games 2-6 of the Brooklyn Nets-Boston Celtics series will be aired on NBC Sports Boston and can also be streamed on NBCSportsBoston.com or with the MyTeams App, which you can download below.
