Kyrie Irving arrived at the Quicken Loans Arena with one thing in mind, win the game and go home. But as soon as the introductions were made, the former Cavalier was met with boos. No heartwarming chants, no thank you's, and definitely, no mercy. Things spiraled downwards when his teammate Gordon Hayward injured his leg with what seems to be a season-ending injury. But Irving remained hopeful, playing every possession with much grit despite the blow.
His possession of the ball earned him another set boos from the Cavaliers fans, but he knew what signed up for.
Previous reports said the Cavs planned on showing a thank you video for Kyrie, but that didn't happen. The Athletic's Jason Lloyd said, the video was a "floating moment," but the moment never came. News about the tribute was primarily mentioned on the cleveland.com report, but not everyone from the locker room welcomes the idea.
LeBron James, however, downplayed the boos saying, they were nothing. In fact, these boos can sometimes fuel up athletics to even do better during the game.
But not everything about last night's opener between the Cleveland Cavaliers and Boston Celtics was against Kyrie. In fact, his former teammates including LeBron James divulged on their customary handshakes. J.R.
Smith, Kevin Love, and Tristan Thompson all approached Kyrie and made their personal handshakes. LeBron found his chance after Kyrie made his supposed to be game-tying shot but fails to deliver.
Former teammates handshake
After the game, the media had one more shot to ask Kyrie about his decision to leave Cleveland wherein he said: "That probably will never ever be divulged because it's not important.
This was literally just a decision that I wanted to make solely based on my happiness and pushing my career forward." He did not want to mention a specific reason or person for that matter.
Kyrie on Gordon Hayward's injury
Meanwhile. Kyrie Irving addressed Gordon Hayward's injury as something that is very unfortunate, but then everybody has seen a similar thing before.
Irving saw it happen to Paul George during a practice for the Olympics. While sympathizes with Hayward, he also mentioned that they have games to play and at the end of the day, it is the team's duty to bring everyone up and regroup. "G's gonna be fighting back to return to the court," Irving added.
Kyrie Irving finished with 22 pts with Cleveland winning the game at 102-99.
