Cavaliers Beat Celtics In Game 7, But Why Wasn’t Kyrie Irving On The Boston Bench?
The Cleveland Cavaliers and the Boston Celtics have a lot of history between them, and now they both share another common factor: Kyrie Irving. The young point guard shockingly asked the Cavs to trade him last summer after reaching three straight NBA Finals with LeBron James and the team. He ended up with Boston, and the plot thickened between the two franchises.
Flash forward to the end of the NBA season and the Cleveland Cavaliers and Boston Celtics were poised to play one another in the Eastern Conference Finals. However, Kyrie Irving wasn’t apart of the series due to a knee injury that required surgery. Although Kyrie didn’t play, fans fully expected to see him cheering on the Celtics from the bench, but that wasn’t the case for Sunday’s Game 7 between the two teams.
According to ESPN, fans immediately noticed that Kyrie Irving was absent from the sidelines on Sunday night, but why? Celtics president of basketball operations Danny Ainge revealed after the Celtics loss to the Cavs that Kyrie was forced to stay off the bench for Game 7 due to a “deviated septum” which required surgery.
Ainge admitted that Kyrie Irving’s deviated septum was an ongoing problem, which resulted from a facial fracture the Boston star suffered earlier in the season. Danny also joked that Kyrie needed to have the surgery in order to keep his face looking good, so he didn’t jeopardize his movie career.
As many fans know, Irving is starring in the summer comedy, Uncle Drew, which is a character that Kyrie created for a series of commercials. Drew is an older gentleman who still has crazy basketball skills. The movie also stars Shaquille O’Neal, Reggie Miller, Nate Robinson, Chris Webber, and other NBA fixtures, as well as WBNA star Lisa Leslie, and fan favorite actress Tiffany Haddish.
Of course, Kyrie Irving isn’t the only member of the Boston Celtics that was forced to sit out of the Eastern Conference Finals. Irving’s teammate, Gordon Hayward, suffered a gruesome leg injury during the first game of the season, coincidentally against the Cleveland Cavaliers. He missed the entire season, but has reportedly been “progressing well.”
“He’s on the court now, finally doing a little bit of competition, like just one-on-one. And he’ll progress along that line slowly. We think that he’ll be playing basketball in the next couple months,” Danny Ainge said of Hayward.
Kyrie Irving has not spoken out about the Boston Celtics’ Game 7 loss to his former team in the Eastern Conference Finals.
