Former Boston Celtics and current Brooklyn Nets star Kyrie Irving poked the third rail of Boston sports ahead of his first appearance in front of fans since leaving the team in free agency by (rightly and justifiably) asking for a response from the fans coming to Games 3 and 4 free of casual racism.
In asking the fans of his former team to ‘keep it hoop,’ he seemed to breach his own social contract by symbolically stepping on the Celtics logo at midcourt, which may or may not be in some way tied to a fan throwing a water bottle and (rightly and justifiably) getting arrested and banned from the arena for life.
In this episode of the Celtics Lab, we take a quick look at those events and the general trend of terrible behavior around the league, and try and make sense of our thoughts on this complicated set of interrelated issues.
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However you feel about Irving’s choice of symbolism after Game 4, the trend of how players in arenas are being treated is a problematic and highly visible phenomenon the NBA needs to find ways to address more effectively.
We aren’t sure if upping the ante with increasingly aggressive criminal charges is the answer, but ignoring the problem certainly isn’t.
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