Kyrie Irving and Celtics sound finished with their feud entering NBA Finals

BOSTON, MA — It’s hard to blame Celtics fans for going there. Kyrie Irving doesn’t either.

As the NBA Finals loom — a matchup against a Mavericks franchise only loosely connected to Boston between the long-ago Rajon Rondo trade and Grant Williams’ departure last summer — everyone wants to talk about Irving. Will it define the Finals? The discourse, civil or otherwise, is as large as any question on the floor.

Even the ever-focused Al Horford took a moment at Friday’s practice to give the Boston crowd his seal of approval to be themselves regarding Irving.

“Our fans, they care about the Celtics. They care about Boston,” Horford told CLNS Media/CelticsBlog. “When he left, it wasn’t ideal for everyone here. So, I know the fans, it’s the Finals, regardless of who’s coming in and who’s not, it’s gonna be lively. It’s gonna be exciting. It’s gonna be loud. TD Garden’s gonna be ready to go. It’s those environments you want to play in … this is the big stage. I don’t expect anything less from our fans. Our fans are gonna be who they are and that’s what it is.”

While both sides have embraced the environment ahead, Irving expressing to The Boston Globe’s Gary Washburn and myself in March that Celtics fans have a right to boo him and it’s part of the game, Irving and his former Boston teammates have mostly moved on. After Boston fans chanted ‘F Kyrie’ while celebrating the East finals victory, the Celtics franchise has also moved well past Irving’s departure. NBC Sports Boston’s Drew Carter mentioned Dallas, as an organization, having more animosity toward Kristaps Porzingis as this point than Boston has toward Irving in his Garden Report appearance.

Part of the pain left by Irving (and Horford’s) departure was Boston seemingly fading into near irrelevancy by 2021. Irving fanned the flames with the Lucky stomp and pointed comments toward the city and fans — but what hurt most was that the Celtics weren’t close to his Nets. Now, they’re significant favorites over Irving’s Mavericks.

“Every time we got within close, it seemed like they would hit two threes or three threes and create separation, and get to the free throw line,” Irving said after Boston beat Dallas 138-110 back in March. “They’ve been showing it all season and for the past few seasons. They’ve been showing how good of a team they are, together, and how well they play off each other.”

The loss left Irving with 10 straight losses to the Celtics dating back to his time with Brooklyn. Only 13 months earlier, he suffered one that shook his faith entirely with the Nets. Boston won 139-96 and despite lengthy commentary post-game about how he’d try to dig deep and figure out how to beat the Celtics, he demanded a trade the following day and never played another game for Brooklyn.

A shaky transition followed that involved Dallas ducking the playoffs and doubts emerging in Irving and Luka Dončić’s ability to play together. They figured it out and turned it into a tandem strong enough to power the Mavericks to the Finals as a No. 5 seed and rejuvenate Irving’s career.

As Irving walked off the court in Minnesota with the West championship trophy on Thursday, he reminisced on how difficult seven years away from the Finals were. Looking back at the winter, he already expressed being in a better place and leaving the past behind.

“A lot of attention is on me in terms of the fandom. It’s been six years. You gotta love it, but rightfully so,” Irving said. “For my career record against them the last few games, I haven’t won, so until I beat them, they have all the right to continue to boo. That’s what makes the theatrics of sports and competitive sports fun. You gotta embrace it.”

Whether and why each fan heckles Irving will be their choice, especially as the series and the narratives revolving around it evolve. It’s easy to imagine an older version of Irving playing the tit-for-tat with the crowd, as he did in the infamous 2022 Game 1 where he shouted at fans in the hallway, gave the middle finger numerous times and said he’d give the fans the same energy they gave him. That, too, was a long time ago now, and it’s easier to imagine a series that, as Irving tunes boos out, becomes more about winning a championship.

Horford laid out that expectation on Friday, while Joe Mazzulla expressed that anyone can become the villain. Mazzulla didn’t cross paths with Irving, arriving in 2019-20 after his departure, but for Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum, who entered the league shortly before Irving’s arrival, they’ve taken the high road in the years since. Tatum waved off boos in a 2022 game. Brown defended Irving during his suspension last season, and both players formed a closer bond since the rocky start to their relationship in Boston.

Something as mundane as Irving claiming credit for where Brown and Tatum stand today could be enough to inflame fans before. But Irving has watched and given them credit for how they handled the downturn following his departure, calls for their breakup and their rise to the top.

“JB’s doing wondrous things, JT’s doing wondrous things,” he said. “But as a competitor, I want to beat them every time.”

That’s no longer different from any star on the other side of the Finals — and following his conciliatory March comments, something finally changed Celtics fans. Some fans expressed a similar desire to move on, and some hope emerged that this series won’t become all about Kyrie.

If all goes well, it could become about Brown and Tatum taking over the league.

“(They) had a lot of external noise around them as a duo and how well they would work together in the future,” Irving said. “Who works well? Was it JB or JT? Just as a fan of the game, you see all that, you hear all that, but knowing them personally, I think that they’re handling it extremely well. They’re not afraid to get their hands dirty going after what they want, metaphorically speaking, out there as leaders. They’re willing to put their bodies on the line. They’re willing to play a lot of games to put their team in a better position for the season and you gotta give them credit for that. They didn’t really need any motivation from me. When I first met them, they were hungry young players who wanted to be stars as soon as they got into the league. I think that’s what separated them.”