Kyrie Irving: Are teams really better when he’s not on the floor?

For the second time in three years, Kyrie Irving has gone down with an injury and his teams have played vastly better without him. Why?

Stop me if you have heard this before. Kyrie Irving joins a new team. He goes down with an injury. The team suddenly plays better.

It seems innocuous to say that playing with Kyrie Irving comes with a double-edged sword. Sure you have this amazing talent, but the injuries keep piling up. In the three years since his Cleveland exodus, both the Boston Celtics and Brooklyn Nets have endured mixed results.

Each of these landing spots for Irving has led to automatic high expectations. Tired of being LeBron’s little brother, he has sought to be the leader of a team for the past three years and be able to win on his own.

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In the 2017-18 season, Irving missed 22 games and the team managed to go 14-8 in that span, while also being about five minutes away from an NBA Finals berth.

A similar pattern occurred the following year, as the Celtics managed a 12-3 record with Irving out.

Taking his talents to Brooklyn this season, Irving has yet again come down with an injury and has missed the last 19 games. The Kyrie-less Nets have gone 12-7 in that span.

With a talent like Kyrie Irving missing for these stretches of time, it would be assumed that his teams would struggle. Playing without a clutch shooting point guard with superhuman ball-handling skills would be an unrecoverable loss to some, yet the Celtics and Nets have both managed.

According to Basketball-Reference, each of Irving’s teams from the last three seasons has seen an increase in a variety of stats when he is not playing. For example, the assist percentage, which measures the rate to which a teammate of his scores off an assist is raised at least three percent in all three seasons observed when Irving is off the court.

Additionally, Irving has taken nearly 2,600 shots since 2017. With him being unavailable, these shots need to come from somewhere.

The loss of a single superstar allows the coaching staff to shift their tactics to a whole team approach. They are forced to rely on everyone else and put the ball in the hands of those available.

Because of this, Irving’s absence allows his teammates to shine.

For Boston, it was Terry Rozier and for Brooklyn, it is Spencer Dinwiddie. Each of these players was or are in the midst of a career year and that is thanks in large part to the open shot opportunities available.

There is no easy way to replace Irving with one singular player. It is impossible. However, it is possible to fill a roster with a series of dependable players who have enough skills to manage the load in his absence.