NBA Twitter roasts Danny Ainge’s tunnel vision after Kyrie Irving’s comments

Danny Ainge responded to Kyrie Irving’s comments about racist Celtics fans in Boston, and NBA Twitter roasted him for his tunnel vision.

Look, there’s no beating around the bush on this one: There are quite a few racist sports fans in the city of Boston. It’s a predominantly white city, and as much as those diehard fans love their Boston Celtics, we’ve heard far too many stories from former and current players — and seen the ugliness firsthand — to pretend like there isn’t a problem here.

So to hear Celtics general manager Danny Ainge try and do just that, it’s more than understandable that NBA Twitter felt the need to absolutely roast him for it.

On Tuesday, Brooklyn Nets star and former Celtics point guard Kyrie Irving said he hoped not to hear racist remarks when he returns to TD Garden for Game 3 of Brooklyn’s first-round matchup against Boston:

"“I mean, it’s not my first time being an opponent in Boston, so I’m just looking forward to competing with my teammates and hopefully we can just keep it strictly basketball, there’s no belligerence or any racism going on, subtle racism and people yelling s**t from the crowd.”"

When Ainge was asked about those comments on 98.5 The Sports Hub, he completely ducked reality, per Chris Forsberg of NBC Sports Boston:

"“I think that we take those kind of things seriously. I never heard any of that, from any player that I’ve ever played with in my 26 years in Boston. I never heard that before from Kyrie, and I talked to him quite a bit. So, I don’t know. As far as I’m concerned, it doesn’t matter. We’re just playing basketball. Players can say what they want.”"

Danny Ainge needs to wake up

At best, this is an incredibly ignorant form of tunnel vision, and at worst, it’s an outright lie. Either way, it’s out of touch with reality, and NBA Twitter skewered him for it.

For starters, many quickly pointed out recent accounts from Marcus Smart, as well as Celtics greats like Bill Russell and Kevin Garnett, about their experiences with racism in Beantown:

Even better, it didn’t take long for Smart to publicly back up Irving’s assertion that there are, indeed, some racist fans in Boston:

Mostly, there was a great sense of disappointment in Ainge’s narrow-mindedness.

Here’s hoping this serves as a wakeup call for Ainge and the rest of the league, especially after witnessing one fan dump popcorn on Russell Westbrook in Philadelphia and another spit on Trae Young in New York. To deny or play ignorant about the racism these players have experienced in many of these arenas is just shameful at this point.