Kyrie Irving insists he’ll be ready for Celtics camp

LAS VEGAS » Kyrie Irving isn’t in a position where he could play with USA Basketball this week at its minicamp.

He made the trip to Las Vegas anyway.

The way Irving sees it, if USA Basketball calls, you answer. So he was in the gym Thursday for the start of the two-day camp, watching and interacting with guys but not partaking in the on-court action.

And he insisted that when the Boston Celtics start training camp in about two months, he will be fully ready to go.

“Easily. Easily. Easily,” Irving said. “It’s just the summertime. This is probably one of the first summers in my last seven years where I’ve actually had time to kind of develop and work on things that I want to improve on.”

Irving’s first season with the Celtics ended in midMarch with a knee issue that required surgery. The Celtics went to the Eastern Conference finals even without him and Gordon Hayward (who missed all but the first five minutes of the season because of injury) anyway.

And now with LeBron James now out of the East — he signed with the Los Angeles Lakers, meaning his eightyear run of being on the team that wins the East is ending — Boston figures to be a popular pick to reach the NBA Finals next season.

“At the end of the day, we’re going to be battling anyway,” Irving said. “We haven’t started. Everyone’s 0-0 right now. The expectations, the power rankings, all that other good stuff that the media loves doing, it’s all part of the game. Obviously there’s some expectations that we have to meet individually and then as a group.”

Irving was the third-leading scorer for the U.S. at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics, starting all eight games and averaging 11.4 points. The U.S. went 8-0 in Rio on the way to gold. TWITTER BEEF » Kevin Durant was a recent guest on Portland guard C.J. McCollum’s podcast, which wound up leading to a bizarre Twitter exchange where McCollum called Durant’s decision to sign with Golden State two summers ago “soft.”

Predictably, that didn’t go over well with Durant, who lashed back.

But when asked about the saga at USA Basketball’s minicamp Thursday, Durant didn’t shed a lot of new light on the topic.

“What happened?” Durant asked, incredulously, when a reporter asked him for his side of the story.

Durant seemed to take exception with the notion that he was the upset person in the tale.

“So I’m the upset one because he responded to something I said . ... So how am I upset?” Durant asked. BASKETBALL ACUMEN » The sheer amount of basketball IQ inside the practice facility at UNLV on Thursday was impressive. Besides U.S. coach Gregg Popovich and his coaching staff that includes Villanova coach Jay Wright and Gonzaga coach Mark Few among others, there were plenty of other proven basketball minds watching practice.

Among them: USA Basketball CEO Jerry Colangelo, longtime NBA executive and 2018 Basketball Hall of Fame enshrinee Rod Thorn, former U.S. coach Mike Krzyzewski of Duke, Golden State general manager Bob Myers, Hall of Famer Chris Mullin, Dallas coach Rick Carlisle and Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim.