Celtics’ Irving needs surgery for injured knee, won’t be back this season

BOSTON — The Boston Celtics have spent most of the season adjusting on the fly. Now they will have to go through the NBA playoffs without Kyrie Irving.

The star point guard will need surgery on his left knee and is done for the season. On Thursday, the team put his recovery time at four to five months.

Irving, who hasn’t played since March 11, said he won’t dwell on what might have been.

“The hardest thing to do sometimes is accept the uncontrollable things life throws at you,” he wrote in an Instagram post. “It’s simply a test of your perseverance and will, to be present, even in the wake of what’s going on.”

In the upcoming surgery, two screws will be removed. They were implanted after Irving fractured a kneecap during the 2015 NBA Finals. Irving recently developed an infection at the site of the screws, and now they must be taken out. After his original procedure last month, the Celtics said the knee was structurally sound and the kneecap healed, but the wire had been putting pressure on the knee.

This is Irving’s first season with the Celtics after he demanded to be traded from Cleveland. The player he was dealt for, point guard Isaiah Thomas — traded by the Cavaliers to the Los Angeles Lakers in February after playing just 15 games for Cleveland — had hip surgery last month and is also out for the season.

Irving believes his best basketball is ahead.

“This season was only a snapshot of what’s to come from me,” he wrote in his post. “Trust Me. The journey back to the top of Mt. Everest continues.”

The latest news wasn’t surprising considering the tight recovery window he faced. But it is a blow to the Celtics, who had been playing well despite a run of recent injuries to key players. Boston will likely enter the playoffs as the Eastern Conference’s No. 2 seed behind Toronto.

In addition to Irving, Marcus Smart is sidelined after right thumb surgery, Daniel Theis is out for the season after left knee surgery, and Gordon Hayward is not expected back as he recovers from his gruesome ankle injury in the season opener.

With Irving out, the Celtics will need someone to be the sparkplug for a team that had hoped to make a run at the conference title after last year’s 4-1 series loss to Cleveland in the Eastern finals. But Boston has been making adjustments to its rotation for weeks, going 7-4 in its past 11 games without Irving.