Irving’s return just one intriguing storyline as NBA Finals beckon

Boston, MA. – May 28: Brooklyn Nets guard Kyrie Irving (11) taunts the crowd as he enters as the Celtics take on the Nets in Game 3 of the first round of NBA Playoffs at the Garden on May 28, 2021 in Downtown, Boston, MA. (Staff Photo By Stuart Cahill/MediaNews Group/Boston Herald)

Kyrie Irving was supposed to be the player who’d deliver the Celtics their 18th NBA championship.

Now, five years and one messy divorce later, Boston will need to beat Irving’s Dallas Mavericks to claim that elusive Banner 18.

You can’t script a more compelling NBA Finals showdown than that.

Boston’s four major professional teams have competed in 20 championship games/series since the turn of the century — including this one, which tips off Thursday night at TD Garden — and none of those featured a villain quite like Irving.

Kobe Bryant’s Lakers in 2008 and ’10 are in the conversation. Eli Manning, too, in the second Patriots-Giants Super Bowl. Bruins fans’ indifference toward the Canucks quickly turned to hatred during the 2011 Stanley Cup Final.

But the Irving ire is different. This is a player who infamously declared that he planned to re-sign with the Celtics, only to begin plotting his exit less than six months later. His final season with Boston in 2018-19 was a dysfunctional mess, and his subsequent visits to TD Garden as a Brooklyn Net were fraught with controversy.

The pregame sage-burning. The Lucky logo stomp. The middle fingers. The deafening “Kyrie sucks” chants.

It is worth noting that Boston’s current players aren’t nearly as anti-Kyrie as the Celtics fanbase is, and that their split, while ugly at the time, worked out well for both sides. Irving’s exit cleared space for Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown to blossom into true superstars, and Irving, after a disastrous attempt at a big-three team-up with Kevin Durant and James Harden, found an ideal home as Luka Doncic’s out-of-the-spotlight sidekick in Dallas.

“Obviously, there were some ups and downs,” said Tatum, who’s been an All-Star in every season since Irving’s departure and a first-team All-NBA selection in the last three. “But I think, for me, being a first-, second-year player, being around a superstar essentially every day and seeing how to navigate that space (was beneficial).

“And then obviously on the court, he’s one of the most talented guys I’ve ever seen. So it seems like a very long time ago, but I’ve got a lot of great memories from having (Irving) as a teammate.”

And the Irving angle isn’t the only juicy storyline of these Finals. Those are surprisingly plentiful for two teams that have little shared history.

There’s the Kristaps Porzingis revenge factor. Dallas signed the Celtics big man to a five-year max contract in 2019, then traded him for a pair of middling veterans after 2 1/2 underwhelming and injury-plagued seasons.

Porzingis couldn’t stay healthy and, by his own admission, didn’t mesh well with an up-and-coming Doncic, prompting Dallas to cut bait in 2021. After a reset year with Washington, Porzingis arrived in Boston last offseason and proceeded to revitalize his career, giving the NBA-best Celtics a rare, 7-foot-2 weapon at both ends of the floor. He averaged 20.1 points and 7.2 rebounds per game during the regular season on career-best 51.6% shooting.

A calf strain sidelined Porzingis for the Eastern Conference semifinals and finals, but the 28-year-old appears to be tracking toward a Game 1 return. He’ll surely be motivated against his former club.

Speaking of motivated, there’s Porzingis’ 38-year-old backup, Al Horford, who is seeking his first NBA title in his 17th pro season. The Finals opener will be Horford’s 182nd career playoff game, tying him with John Stockton for second-most all-time among players without a championship ring. The Celtics would love to remove their inspirational leader from that ignominious list.

There’s the headlining matchup between two top-five players in Doncic and Tatum, playing on this stage for the first and second time, respectively. The two first-team All-NBAers both lead their respective teams in points, assists and rebounds this postseason, and they’ve posted a total of 24 double-doubles — 16 more than all of their teammates combined. No other player in this series has more than three.

Doncic is the best player in this series, if not the entire league. But Tatum isn’t far behind, and leading the Celtics to a long-awaited championship would go a long way toward upending the popular narrative that he’s not truly one of the NBA’s elites.

There’s the sure-to-be-mentioned sidenote that both of these teams traded away Grant Williams within the last 11 months.

And, of course, there’s the central question of whether the Celtics can finish the job, shed their recent bridesmaid reputation and win it all for the first time since 2008. A Finals victory would cap one of the most dominant seasons in NBA history and vault Tatum and Brown (and the rest of this stacked Boston roster) to immortality. Lose, and their sensational 64-win campaign would ultimately be remembered as a failure.

That’s what’s at stake. That’s what the Celtics have been preparing for since they finished off their sweep of the Indiana Pacers last Monday. It all starts Thursday night. This should be fun.