Irving OK for Star turn
Knee healthy enough to join Team LeBron
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — After a week of rehab and consultation with his body, Kyrie Irving is going to be playing some basketball Sunday night. The All-Star starter also is looking forward to rejoining a Celtics crew that’s been on an upswing since critical comments from Marcus Morris that he supported.
On Saturday, Irving quickly answered what had become an important question to some Celts followers: whether he would participate in the All-Star Game after missing the past two outings with a strained right knee suffered a week earlier against the Clippers.
Asked where he was health-wise and if he expected to start in the game, Irving replied simply, “Yeah, I’m good.”
Much later in his 16-minute chat, the subject came back to his rehab both in Boston and in Charlotte, where he’s been accompanied by his personal trainer and Celtics physical therapist Brian Dolan. His answer essentially explained his decision to play.
“I mean, I’ve been resting for a , so the treatment is … it’s not fun,” said Irving, who felt good enough to stand during the entire Rising Stars game in his role as honorary coach. “It’s not fun doing that stuff every single day, but it’s part of the job trying to stay in shape, you know, not being on the court as much as I would like to be. But it really just puts in perspective how much I know my body. So that’s the most important thing.
“(The rehab process) factored in a lot. “For me, I just wanted to go out there and play if I had the opportunity. You know, I do get paid to play basketball, so being out for seven days, six days, you know, doing treatment every single day, doing what I can to prepare my body and being able to go up and down before I play next Thursday (in Milwaukee when the Celtics’ season resumes), I was like, hey, if I have the opportunity, great. But if I don’t, then I wasn’t going to be sad or anything like that.
“I’m grateful for the opportunity to be an AllStar, but there’s not too many chances you get to be around Kawhi Leonard, being around (Kevin Durant) and have a starting lineup like we do (on Team LeBron). So a lot of that was on my mind, but it didn’t factor in going into, you know, taking care of my health and making sure I’m good to play.”
The team Irving left against the Clippers went on to blow a 28-point lead, two days after the Celts had squandered an 18-point advantage in a loss to the Lakers. Following the former, Morris called out the club for being too individualistic, not playing hard enough together and not having fun. The response on the floor was a tight win in Philadelphia and a solid victory at home against Detroit.
“Well, I mean, there was some truth into it,” Irving said of Morris’ talk. “You know, we obviously understand that we have a lot of talent in our locker room, so it’s been a lot to manage. But we’ve come out pretty successful — obviously not as successful as we would like to be, but that’s just overall the attitude that you have to have in order to win in this league.
“You want to be the top team in the East. You want to be one of the top teams in the whole entire league, you know, have playoff position, enjoy the regular season and, you know, have fun. At the end of the day, I’ve also played in Cleveland in my beginning years, like, it wasn’t fun every single day. Like, things happen within the locker room and you’ve just got to move on. And the maturity of young players understanding that, that it’s just part of the business — you know, it’s not college, nobody’s babying you, you guys aren’t going to baby anybody, you’re not going to hold back your tongue or your words — so it’s OK to make mistakes. The judgments outside don’t really matter in terms of what you feel as yourself. Nobody’s going to validate who I am anymore. I used to do it. I struggled with it, just mentally, just really figuring out how powerful words are and what they mean. Honestly, nobody can tell me who I’m going to be anyway, so once I started believing that, all this just became a lot easier.
“So there’s some truth in it in terms of our team, but the understanding of just the overall big picture is the only thing that matters when it comes to these NBA locker rooms and setting goals for yourself.”
Irving touched on a number of other topics in his session, among them the point when he started ignoring outside opinions: “I started listening to myself. That’s really what it comes down to. I just stopped listening to everyone else telling me who I was supposed to be, a scorer or a passer. ‘He’s not as good as this.’ No, I’m a great player. Like, I know that. Nobody else is going to take that away from me. I go as far as I take myself, and once I had that confidence inside of me and I believed it every single day and nothing was taken away from me, then it made this a lot easier to just be who I am.”