Inside The Nets

Kyrie Irving’s Nets Tenure Was Completely Different From His Celtics Tenure

The former Nets guard opens up about the commodore of when he was a Boston Celtic.

Ajayi Browne

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With the NBA Finals continuing to roll on, Dallas Mavericks point guard Kyrie Irving gave one of his most honest reflections on what happened when he played on the Boston Celtics from 2017 to 2019. How he responded to playing in Brooklyn with the points he makes in hisrecent interview with ESPN's Ramona Shelburne, perhaps some differences can be depicted.

"Back then I didn't know how to manage those personalities. I went into every day feeling like I had to be better than my teammates," said Irving. "We were very, very competitive, and the one thing that I always instilled in them when I first came there was: stop being afraid to challenge the other guys. That was something that we shared as younger players -- we wanted to establish ourselves as a great team, so that's how we got started."

There was nothing wrong with Irving's mentality when it came to that. He would have never started playing this beautiful game if he didn't want to be the best in the sport. It surely didn't make his former Celtics teammates worse. In fact, some of his former Celtics teammates are still there outplaying him in the Finals this year. Former Celtic Terry Rozier even admitted in 2019 that he didn't enjoy his role with the Irving-led Celtics squad.

When officially arriving in the city that never sleeps in 2019, one thing that could have rubbed Irving's former Celtics teammates the wrong way was what he said in 2019 on Kevin Durant the ETC's podcast with the Boardroom. The former Nets guard expressed that he felt on all of his previous teams, he was the best option down the stretch of a close game.

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Ajayi Brown
AJAYI BROWNE

Ajayi has covered the NBA for several years, most notably covering the league at large for SLAM and the Brooklyn Nets at several outlets before joining Inside the Nets.

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