Kyrie Irving is the villain that the NBA Playoffs needed.
Whether you agree with his antics or not, his politics or not, his controversial stances or not, one thing is clear; Kyrie Irving is the villain that the NBA Playoffs desperately needed. Now that they have it, the NBA needs to hope that the first-round NBA Playoff series between the Brooklyn Nets and Boston Celtics lives up to its Game 1 hype.
Without LeBron James, the Los Angeles Lakers, refusing to crown Giannis Antetokounmpo and the Milwaukee Bucks, and consistently trying to downplay the success of the two No. 1 seeds (Phoenix Suns and Miami Heat) in the two respective conferences, the NBA needed a storyline to run with to start the playoffs.
And Kyrie took the baton and ran with it.
Game 1 between the Nets and Celtics had it all – it was a game of runs, it had plenty of star power (Kyrie, Kevin Durant, Jayson Tatum, Jaylen Brown), it had the pre-series storylines, and the game ended on a buzzer-beating shot.
Still, Kyrie managed to raise that up 10 fold throughout the game.
Going back and forth both with the fans and the Celtics on the court, Kyrie quickly became the most hated man in Boston on Sunday afternoon.
He’s what morning talk shows opened up with Monday morning and became the biggest talking point from the weekend.
During the regular season, the national media couldn’t stop talking about the Lakers and the Nets. Now, they get to carry that into the playoffs. LeBron and the Lakers may be out of the national spotlight (at least for the time being, until we get closer to the offseason), but Kyrie has kept the Nets in the picture.
And the NBA has to be thrilled with how viral Game 1 was between Brooklyn and Boston.
Kyrie may be a complicated man, but he just injected the NBA Playoffs with the right amount of intrigue that it needed.