J-Speaks: Celtics Irving Done For the Remainder of the Season

For much of the 2017-18 NBA season, the Boston Celtics have had to adjust. It began minutes into the season back in October 2017 when they lost free agent signee in All-Star Gordon Hayward to a serious ankle injury. They have had to adjust to not having the likes of guard Marcus Smart, second-year swingman Jaylen Brown and All-Star Center Al Horford to due injury or illness. Recently they have been without All-Star starting lead guard Kyrie Irving due to knee surgery. The hope was that he would be back at some point in the playoffs for the playoffs after what the team called minor surgery on that knee on Mar. 24 found out how long Irving will be on the shelf. 

The No. 2 Seeded Boston Celtics (53-25), who have lost their last two games in a row will be without their top scorer and floor general for the rest of this season, including the playoffs, which start next weekend as he is due to have another surgery on that knee on Saturday. 

The organization said on Thursday about that report, that came from ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski that the recovery time for their leading scorer and top assists man with averages of 24.4 and 5.1 respectably, on a career-high of 49.1 percent from the field and 40.7 from three-point range will be at four to five months.  

The 25-year-old Irving’s scoring average was 3.1 points higher than the scoring average of Hall of Famer Larry Bird’s 21.3 output as a rookie in the 1979-80 NBA campaign, according to the Elias Sports Bureau. 

“The hardest thing to do sometimes is accept the uncontrollable things life throws at you,” the five-time All-Star wrote in an Instagram post. 

You try consistently to learn, grow, and prepare everyday to equip your mind, body, and spirit with tools to deal with some of those things, but I feel when those moments arise they all give you a sense of unfulfillment, simply because it puts some of your professional journey and goals on a brief hold. It’s simply a test of your perseverance and Will, to be present even in the wake of what’s going on. In this case, finding out I have an infection in my knee is definitely a moment that I now accept and move past without holding on to the all the what ifs, proving the nay-Sayers completely f***ing wrong, and accomplishing the goals I’ve set out for the team and myself. This season was only a snap shot of what’s to come from me. Trust me. “The journey back to the top of Mt. Everest continues.” #StandingRockSiouxTribe. Let’s go Celtics!! Celtics fans, I look forward to hearing how loud it gets in the TD Garden during the playoffs and experiencing how intense the environment gets. Thank you all!”

Irving, who the team acquired in a blockbuster deal from the current No. 3 Seeded and three-time defending Eastern Conference champion Cleveland Cavaliers (49-30) has not played since Mar. 11, did say though he will not dwell on what the team could have been as the 2018 NBA Postseason is just around the corner. 

“…Kyrie Irving will undergo a procedure to remove two screws implanted in his left patella [tendon] after the patellar fracture he suffered during the NBA Finals in 2015,” the Celtics said in a press release on Thursday. 

The team also said in the release, “Following a mid-March procedure to remove a tension wire that had been implanted at the same time as the screws, pathology indicated the presence of a bacterial infection at the site of the hardware. To ensure that no infection remains in the knee, the screws will be removed.” 

The Celtics following the original surgery on Irving’s left knee said that it was structurally sound and that the kneecap healed, but that tension wire was putting a lot of pressure on the knee. 

According to a report from Yahoo! Sports Shams Charania, the Celtics will sign guard Jonathan Gibson, who has played in the Chinese Basketball Association to fill the roster spot vacated by Irving. 

In an ironic twist of what has happened for the Celtics, the player that they sent to the Cavs for Irving was last season starting lead guard in Isaiah Thomas. The two-time All-Star who had missed basically the first half of the season recovering from a left hip injury was traded to the Los Angeles Lakers at the Feb. 8 trade deadline. After playing well and seemingly getting his game on track in the final year of his contract had surgery on that same hip recently, and he will be on the shelf for the rest of this season. 

In addition to not having Irving, Smart as mentioned earlier is also on the shelf following surgery on this right thumb and rookie center Daniel Theis, who was a major contributor off the bench for the team had surgery on his left knee in the middle of last month and is done for the season. 

Even though the Eastern Conference leading Toronto Raptors (56-22) will enter the postseason with the best record and win the Atlantic Division for the fourth time in the last five seasons, the East was still considered up for grabs, even with Cavs and four-time league MVP LeBron James still around. 

To put this into clearer context, with Irving in the lineup, the Celtics were 41-19, averaging 105.2 points per game, and had a +4.4 point-differential. 

Without Irving, and possible Smart, head coach Brad Stevens squad will need not just the entire team to rise up and play even better as a whole, but for someone individually to be the top scorer for a team that had high hopes of being a serious challenger to the defending conference champion Cavs, who defeated the C’s in the Eastern Conference Finals last spring in five games. 

The good news if there is any for the Celtics is that they have been able to win games in the regular season without Irving. 

While they are scoring 99.3 points and have a +1.7 point-differential without him in the 18 games he has been out, the team has gone 12-6 with him out, which includes a 7-4 mark in their last 11 games. 

One player who has risen his game in the absence of Irving has been his understudy in third-year guard Terry Rozier out of Louisville. 

He has had a breakout season with career-high averages of 11.4 points and0 4.6 rebounds on 38.7 percent from three-point range. Those numbers have been even better in his 13 games as a starter with averages of 17.3 points, 6.5 rebounds and 4.8 assists on 41.7 percent from three-point range. 

He really announced himself in his third season to the rest of the league back when subbing for Irving, who was on the shelf with a right quad contusion on Jan. 31 as he became just the second player in NBA history to register a triple-double in the first start of his professional career with 17 points, 11 rebounds and 10 assists in helping the Celtics to a 103-73 win versus the New York Knicks (27-51). The last player to do that was guard Tony Wroten for the Philadelphia 76ers on Nov. 13, 2013 in a 123-117 win versus the Houston Rockets, according to the Elias Sports Bureau. 

Two days later in the Celtics to a 119-110 win versus the now lottery bound Atlanta Hawks (22-57), Rozier had a then career-high of 31 points, with seven rebounds and two steals on 11 for 18 shooting, including 6 for 8 from three-point range, with just two turnovers in 36 minutes.   

“Both (starts had) just the same feeling,” Rozier said after the win. “Just wanting to come out aggressive, do what I can on the offensive end and defensive end. My teammates made it so easy for me because they play so hard. We just play hard collectively as a group.”

In leading the Celtics to a 104-93 win at the Sacramento Kings (34-45) on Mar. 25, Rozier established a new career-high of 33 points with five boards and five steals, hitting 12 of his 16 field goals, including 8 of 12 from three-point range. 

Since Irving’s last appearance in a game for the C’s on Mar. 11, the rest of the team as well as Rozier has stepped up their level of offensive output and it has resulted in the team being able to win games as mentioned earlier. 

Forward Marcus Morris has led the team in scoring during this stretch with a 20.8 average. He really came through with the game-winning triple as the Celtics took down the Oklahoma City Thunder 100-99 on Mar. 20 to ignite a six-game winning streak from that date to Mar. 31. 

Rookie forward Jayson Tatum, who scored a career-high of 27 points when Rozier had his then career-high of 31 points at the Hawks and had the first 20/10 game of his career with 23 points and 11 boards versus the Thunder has averaged 17.2 points, while Rozier is averaging 16.6 in replacing Irving. 

Rounding out the scoring is Brown0 at 14.0 and Horford at 12.8 respectably. 

Brown showed his ability to make a shot in the clutch when he canned the game-winning three-pointer with 0.3 seconds left on Mar. 28 to give the Celtics a 97-94 win at the surging Utah Jazz (46-33). The second-year swingman out of the University of California Berkley led the way with 21 points on the evening. 

The question for the C’s though is whether this scoring by-committee approach will be enough to get them past the First-Round against either the Miami Heat, Washington Wizards or Milwaukee Bucks, are jockeying for playoff position in the final days of the regular season. The Heat (43-36) currently occupy the No. 6 spot, while the No. 7 spot is held by the Wizards, who the Celtics defeated in a thrilling seven games in the Semifinals last season and the Bucks (42-37) are in the No. 8 spot. 

What should give all Celtics fans some hope is that this team under Stevens has shown the mentality this season that when a key player is on the shelf, that the person replacing them as well as the entire team will rise to the occasion and do what is necessary to win. 

On top of that, this is a team that will no matter who is in or out of the lineup will bring it at the defensive end, where the Celtics lead “The Association” in opponent’s three-point percentage at 33.4; tied with the Jazz for No. 2 in points allowed (100.1) per game; and are ranked No. 2 in opponent’s field goal percentage at 43.8. 

Losing Kyrie Irving is a big blow to a team that as mentioned earlier felt they had a punchers chance of beating the three-time defending Eastern Conference Champion Cleveland Cavaliers, especially with home court advantage if they were to meet in the Semis. Without him, Gordon Hayward and possibly Marcus Smart, those chances of making that serious run are all but gone. That said, that does not mean that they cannot make things interesting, especially in the opening round, where they do have a serious chance of advancing from. 

Losing Gordon Hayward minutes into this season did not break the team’s spirit. Not having Irving for games earlier in the season, in recent games and now for the remainder of this season did not deter them. Not having certain players like Marcus Smart, Daniel Theis, Al Horford, or Jaylen Brown for a few games because of a concussion did not derail them. 

This is just another opportunity to for the rest of the team to rise and show their mental. The Celtics would have love to have had homecourt advantage throughout the Eastern Conference postseason, but those slim hopes went out the window with their 96-78 loss at the Eastern Conference leaders, the Raptors on Wednesday night, which gave them three-game cushion on the loss side with four games left in the season.

This mountain will be tougher to climb, but the Celtics are not afraid to try and climb that mountain, no matter if it’s the Heat, Wizards or Bucks they see in the opening round of this postseason.

“We’ve played well all year and we’ve dealt with injuries all year,” Stevens said before the Celtics 92-83 win at the Orlando Magic on Mar. 16 (24-54). 

“It started six minutes into the season, and we’ve figured it out. That’s the expectation. We’re just going to work as hard as we can, put in as much as we can that fits and try our best to figure it out.” 

Information, statistics, and quotations are courtesy of 3/16/18 www.nba.com/games/20180316/BOSORL#/preview; 4/5/18 7 p.m. edition of NBATV’s “The Starters,” presented by Jack Daniel’s Tennessee Honey with Tas Melas, J.E. Skeets, Leigh Ellis, and Trey Kerby; 4/5/18 8 p.m. edition of NBA on TNT’s “NBA Tip-Off,” presented by Autotrader with Casey Stern, Isiah Thomas, Candace Parker, and Shaquille O’Neal; 4/5/18 www.nba.com article “Kyrie Irving Out for Remainder of Season And Playoffs After Surgery Reveals Infection,” by Kyle Hightower of “The Associated Press;” 4/5/18 2:30 p.m. edition of “NBA: The Jump” on ESPN with Rachel Nichols, Israel Gutierrez and Tracy McGrady; www.espn.com/nba/standings; www.espn.com/nba/statistics;  www.espn.com/nba/player/gamelog/_/id/3074752/terry-rozier; www.espn.com/nba/players/splits/_/id/3074752/terry-rozier; www.espng.com/nba/team/stats/_/name/bos/boston-celtics; www.espn.com/nba/team/schedule/_/name/bos/boston-celtics; and https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyrie_Irving.