Kyrie Irving’s heroic Game 1 effort deserved a better ending
It was inspiring to see Kyrie Irving gut it out and come up huge in Game 1. It was devastating when he suffered a season-ending knee injury when it all ended.
You can't understate how hard Kyrie Irving played in Game 1 of the NBA Finals. Never known for his defense or for putting his body on the line, Kyrie gutted out almost 44 minutes despite obviously being in discomfort from his tendonitis and foot maladies. He made some critical shots on his way to 23 points and did his best to keep Cleveland afloat when LeBron James took his rare rest breaks. (The Cavaliers were +5 with Irving on the floor and -13 -- much of that in overtime -- when he sat.)
Of course, Kyrie's two most impressive plays of the evening were his two blocks on Stephen Curry, the latter of which temporarily saved the game for Cleveland. There's no overtime for the Cavaliers if Irving doesn't recover and just get his fingertips on the MVP's lay-up attempt. It was the single most surprising play of the postseason to date.
We know that LeBron cannot win a championship by himself. We've seen the evidence in seasons past, including Cleveland's last visit to the Finals in 2007. What gave Cavaliers a chance this time was that LeBron is the greatest player on the planet and he now has a legitimate star next to him in Irving for the first time ever in Ohio. If Irving could play up to his potential through the injuries, the Cavaliers could stay right with the Warriors and just maybe beat them.
Just minutes later after his game-saving block, Kyrie crumpled to the floor, limped to the locker room and dropped his team into complete despair.
That moment is the cruelty of sports and life in action. That was Shaun Livingston blowing out his knee just as he realizes his potential. That was Ron Artest and Stephen Jackson losing their damn minds while on the best Pacers roster ever. That was Jabari Parker tearing his ACL during a promising rookie season. That was doctors finding a blood clot in Chris Bosh's lung a few days after the Heat swing a game-changing trade. That was Derrick Rose wrecking his knee in garbage time of a playoff victory and rising and falling and rising again.
All that was true before it was announced that Irving’s season is over with a fractured kneecap. It’s especially true now.
Just when you see some beautiful oasis in the desert of life, a sandstorm sweeps it away. Sometimes, that oasis never returns to the horizon and you have to come up with other plan. But usually, if you keep fighting, make smart choices and lean on your support system, you’ll return to that oasis. It happened for Livingston, and look at where he is now. It happened for Artest and Jackson. It happened for Rose. It will happen for Parker and Bosh. And it will happen for Irving, too.
What we saw in Game 1 is that Kyrie Irving will keep fighting. What we saw in the locker room is that Kyrie has a strong support system to lean on, led by his father. We saw in Kyrie Irving something that gives us faith that one day, he will be as great as he was in Game 1 again.
It sounds cliché to say you learn more about players in these moments of trial, but you do. We learned everything we needed to know about Kyrie Irving in Game 1.
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