Revisiting Kyrie Irving’s Exchanges With Celtics' TD Garden Playoff Crowd

The former Net had some controversial exchanges with the playoff crowd at TD Garden when playing for Brooklyn. On June 6, he finds himself in that same environment.

Signing with the Brooklyn Nets in the 2019 free agency window indicated everything we needed to know between Kyrie Irving and the Boston Celtics.

After losing 4-1 in the first round of the 2018-19 playoffs to the Milwaukee Bucks, Irving liked his chances of winning a championship elsewhere. The 2018 Eastern Conference Finals wasn't convincing enough for the guard to stay.

When Irving played for the Nets, he matched up with Boston on two occasions in the playoffs: in 2021 and 2022. The two sides split the glory, with Irving's Nets toppling the Celtics in 2021 and the Celtics responding in 2022.

The former Net has always received cold receptions in his returns to TD Garden since leaving in 2019. But in the playoffs, it reaches a different level. Up until this point before the NBA Finals on Thursday, those instances have only happened when Irving was a Net. Here are some of the controversial exchanges the Mavericks guard had with the playoff crowd in TD Garden:

Upon being victorious in Game 4 of the Celtics-Nets first-round series in 2021, someone in the TD Garden crowd threw a water bottle at Irving when he was on his way back to the locker room. After missing, Irving and former Net Tyler Johnson immediately tried to find who threw the bottle and get answers. In this video, you can see Irving and Johnson have an exchange with the person who threw the bottle before he got arrested.

Another instance would be in the 2022 playoffs when the Celtics and the Nets would meet once again in the first round. This exchange though was nowhere close to having bottles thrown. In the third quarter of Game 1 in TD Garden, Irving knocked down a tough jump shot and put up a certain hand gesture at someone who was chirping at him. After the game, the former Net was fined for this.

A third controversial exchange was directed to the entire TD Garden crowd. In that same game, Irving was about to inbound the ball before taunting Boston for crying about him. The 2024 NBA Finals between the Boston Celtics and the Mavericks is going to be quite the showdown on and off the court at the start of tip-off.

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