Celtics have to cope without Kyrie

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

The star point guard requires surgery on his left knee and is done for 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.

In the upcoming surgery, two screws will be removed. They were implanted after Irving’s patellar fracture during the 2015 NBA Finals. Irving recently developed an infection at the site of the screws, and now they must be taken out.

Following his original procedure last month, the team 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 in Boston after he demanded to be traded from Cleveland. And the player he was dealt for, Isaiah Thomas, is out for the season after hip surgery.

Still, Irving believes his best basketball is ahead of him.

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

Cavaliers coach Tyronn Lue was sorry to learn about the guard’s ordeal. After all, Irving made the biggest shot in Cleveland history, a go-ahead 3-pointer in the closing minutes of Game 7 of the 2016 Finals.

“He was a big part of what we did here, a big part of winning the championship and even though he’s on another team you still don’t want to see anyone go through that,” Lue said.

“I know how competitive he is and I know how much he wants to win and to go through this and not be able to play in the postseason is tough for him, so prayers go out to him and his family. I wish him the best.”

This latest news isn’t surprising considering the tight recovery window Irving faced. But it is a blow to a Celtics team that had been playing well despite a run of recent injuries to key players. Boston will likely enter the playoffs as the No 2 seed behind the Toronto Raptors.

The Celtics will take a hit without Irving, but they’ve been making adjustmemts . Irving has been out for the past 11 games, during which Boston was 7-4.