Kyrie Irving expressed he wasn’t frustrated with the Boston Celtics 126-116 loss to the Chicago Bulls on Saturday — a team they’d blown out 133-77 earlier in the year. (That’s 56 points, by the way.) Part of Irving’s reasoning was simply confidence in his own abilities. But, based on another comment he made to reporters in Chicago, it seems he has faith in the rest of the team, too.
I don’t get frustrated by this stuff anymore. It’s just part of the regular season. In the playoffs, plan for a team, prepare for a team, I still don’t see anybody beating us in seven games.
Irving’s calm demeanor is a step in the right direction for the Celtics in regards to postgame press conferences, but his message conflicted with some of his teammates’.
Marcus Smart is frustrated with the Celtics’ level of effort.
Al Horford told reporters he thinks the team needs to stay focused on one game at a time and not look ahead to the postseason, like Irving appears to be.
We have to be able, you know, really just take it a game at a time. We can’t really think playoffs. I know that we all want to be there and do that, but that’s not here yet. You know, there’s a lot of things that we need to work out and our focus needs to be on the next game and, you know, that next game is Toronto.
Similar Smart, Horford felt the Celtics weren’t quite where they needed to be against the Bulls.
We weren’t committed to doing the things we needed to do to play the right way tonight as a group. That’s just the bottom line. … Sometimes you’ll get humbled in this league and you have to be able to have that same approach consistently, and tonight we just didn’t as a group.
Consistency, as they say, is key.
