NBA superstar on title contender is done - report
In what is starting to resemble a worrisome trend, a high-scoring Boston Celtics point guard and MVP candidate has suffered a major injury going into the playoffs.
Last year, it was the diminutive Isaiah Thomas who suffered a hip injury. While Thomas was eventually able to suit up for playoff games, his hip had clearly sapped him of much of his talent.
It was bad enough that Thomas’ injury derailed a talented team so late in the season, but it was worse that the hip injury required significant surgery that made Thomas a shell of his former self for most of this season.
The Celtics had better hope that’s not how Kyrie Irving’s story works out.
Irving, the high-scoring point guard whom the Celtics acquired from the Cleveland Cavaliers, had been spectacular all season long but will now miss the remainder of the regular season and playoffs after surgery on a troublesome knee, according to ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski.
In the aftermath of left knee surgery, Boston Celtics All-Star guard Kyrie Irving will miss the rest of the regular season and playoffs, league sources told ESPN.
— Adrian Wojnarowski (@wojespn) April 5, 2018
The fact that it’s the same knee that all but erased his lone year at Duke University should be cause for concern for the Celtics.
Irving had been shooting a career-best 49 percent from the field, while averaging 24.4 points, 5.1 assists and 3.8 rebounds through 60 games for the Celtics.
It was originally reported in late March, when Irving first had knee surgery, that he was expected to miss three to six weeks of action. That would’ve put Irving back in a Celtics uniform just in time for the first round of the NBA playoffs.
Now it looks like Boston might not be able to get out of the first round at all.
With less than 10 games left in the NBA regular season, the Celtics are staring at a first-round matchup with the Miami Heat, Washington Wizards or Milwaukee Bucks. All three of those teams are about on par with a Boston team missing Irving and free agent pickup Gordon Hayward, whom they lost to a gruesome leg injury on opening night.
Not all is lost for the Celtics, however. Rookie Jayson Tatum has blossomed into future star. Jaylen Brown has taken a major step forward in his second year. And the Celtics still feature one of the best coaches in all of basketball, Brad Stevens.
The Celtics still also feature some heady and tough-minded veterans in Al Horford and Marcus Morris.
All that being said, Irving’s injury is a devastating blow to a team that looked ready to usurp the Cleveland Cavaliers as the Eastern Conference champions. At the start of the year, the Celtics purported “Big 3” of Irving, Hayward and Horford is now just Horford, arguably the weakest link in that trio.
The injury also shifts the balance of power in the east. The top-seeded Toronto Raptors and defending Eastern Conference champion Cavaliers both have to worry about one less team standing in the way of an NBA Finals berth.
The NBA playoffs start April 14.
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