All season long, Kyrie Irving's negativity seemed to bleed into the fabric of the entire Celtics organization, and now, because of that behavior, Steve Bulpett of the Boston Herald is reporting that some of the teams that are interested in signing Irving as a free agent this summer have grown "a great deal more wary."
Bulpett also reports the Celtics are not one of those teams, and that they will still do everything they can to bring Irving back. You wonder who these teams are that have grown wary of Irving. The Knicks? The Lakers? The Clippers? Call me crazy, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say if Irving says he wants to sign with any one of those teams, they won't be able to get the pen in his hand fast enough.
Irving's behavior this season is a fair concern, however. The guy clearly brought the Celtics down off the court to a greater degree than he lifted them on it, and that's saying something considering he had perhaps the best season of his career. But all year long he questioned teammates and made mountains out of molehills, turning every bad game or even bad stretches of games into the end of the world.
The great irony all year long was Kyrie, time and again, telling the media, and anyone else who would listen, that his teammates didn't know how to win and that, implicitly, he was the only one who could teach them if only they would just listen. These were the same teammates, of course, who made it to Game 7 of the Eastern Conference finals WITHOUT Kyrie last season.
Ask yourself, what has Kyrie ever done to convince anyone he "knows how to win" without LeBron James by his side. Let me tell you something: A lot of guys know how to win next to LeBron. It appears some teams are starting to think twice about some of this stuff, though again, I highly doubt it would ever keep any of them from signing Kyrie if given the opportunity.
