Kyrie Irving’s time with the Boston Celtics was far from smooth. After requesting a trade out of Cleveland, Irving was sent to Boston and underwhelmed, at least in terms of team success. They imagined he’d be able to lead the young Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown to a championship, but Boston never made it out of the Conference Finals in Irving’s two seasons there.

A lot of the blame for those failures was placed on Irving, who bolted from Boston following the 2019 playoffs to sign with Kevin Durant on the Brooklyn Nets. He missed the entire 2018 run to the Eastern Conference Finals and then shot just 35.6% from the floor in the second round of the 2019 playoffs against Milwaukee. According to one former teammate, though, all of the blame can’t be placed on Irving.

“We all had our own individual agendas,” Hayward said. “The young guys are trying to prove they’re All-Stars… I’m trying to prove that I’m trying to get back there [from injury]. Kyrie got hurt, so he’s trying to prove it’s his team. Terry [Rozier] was trying to prove that he was a starter. Marcus Smart trying to prove he’s a starter and All-Defense… We probably had seven or eight guys that had career highs of 40 [points] all on the same team, which is pretty unheard of… It was a chaotic season, disappointing how that whole thing went. It just shows you got to have a team that meshes together well… Guys were trying to prove themselves more than play with each other.”

Those experiences worked out well for Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown, who blossomed into All-NBA talents and beat the Dallas Mavericks in the NBA Finals last season, but they went through some growing pains. They didn’t always take well to player leadership, and Kyrie Irving was still growing into a leader, so there was certainly a disconnect within the Celtics.

Irving has been rejuvenated in Dallas, breaking out as the leader that the Celtics and Nets always hoped he could be. He’s been a perfect fit alongside Luka Doncic, both on-court and off.