NBA Season Preview 2019-20: Every team’s biggest question

Brooklyn Nets: Can Kyrie Irving mature as a leader?

Kyrie Irving’s two seasons in Boston were, to put it kindly, a mess. After knee surgery limited him to just 60 games in his first season and forced him to miss the team’s postseason, the Celtics’ young prospects went on an improbable run, making it within just one game the NBA Finals. The success created a rift in the Boston locker room; the team’s young players had tasted success in Irving’s absence, and seemed to bristle at his suggestion that they didn’t know how to win.

It was a divide that Irving ultimately couldn’t bridge. The 2018-19 Celtics’ fractured locker room plagued them all season, and they seemed to routinely play beneath their potential. Ultimately, they went out with a whimper at the hands of the top-seeded Milwaukee Bucks — a series in which a visibly disengaged Irving shot just 25-of-83 combined in the Celtics’ four consecutive losses. In September, he acknowledged it himself, admitting that he failed the team by not giving them everything he had.

It’s one thing for Irving to own up to his mistakes; growing from them is something else entirely. These Brooklyn Nets are his team, at least for this season, and they’re going to go as he does. Irving needs to show that he’s put last season’s troubles behind him. He isn’t solely responsible for the Celtics’ collapse, but as the team’s presumptive leader, he bears a significant responsibility for it. If the 2018-19 Brooklyn Nets are going to avoid a similar fate, it starts and ends with him.