Kyrie Irving’s crunch-time Godzilla act explains the Celtics’ 16-game winning streak

The Boston Celtics, improbably, have won 16 straight basketball games. No one anticipated the Celtics with the best record in the league six weeks into the season, and no one would have guessed this after Gordon Hayward went down minutes into opening night. Instead, the Celtics have pushed aside tragedy — both Hayward’s injury and, on a much more serious level, the death of Jaylen Brown’s best friend — to play inspired hoops on the court.

To win 16 consecutive times in this league is a testament to excellence throughout this organization. We’ve lauded Jayson Tatum’s un-rookie-like play this season and praised their sensational defense. We know how good Brad Stevens is with a whiteboard — even if he covers them up when there’s a chance the media might see them.

Now it’s time to turn our attention back to the most fascinating subject on this entire team.

This has been everything Irving could have hoped for when he left Cleveland. Irving reportedly didn’t like that the media only paid attention to what LeBron James said, and now every oddball comment he makes is disseminated across all platforms. (Even though it’s just expanding brain meme material.) By going vegan, he’s the face of the NBA’s newest craze. And now he’s on the best team in the league, record wise, and the one that being talked about more than ever.

Irving is having a breakout year off the court, but he’s the same player on it, at least statistically. He’s playing fewer minutes than he did in Cleveland, but his per-36 minute stats are nearly identical. The same goes for his efficiency: he has been slight better inside the arc, slightly worse on three-pointers, but overall the same Irving that broke out (basketball wise) last year with James.

Irving wasn’t an MVP candidate last year, and thus the MVP talk he has received seems misplaced. For example, NBA.com’s MVP Ladder currently ranks him second. Boston is the best team right now, and Irving is seen as their top player, so it was inevitable that his name would be bandied around. But while Irving is great offensively, Boston is not, ranked No. 20 in the league in points scored per 100 possessions.

Boston is the NBA’s best defensive team — their 95.8 points allowed per 100 possessions is three full points better than the next closest team — but their defensive MVP so far is Al Horford. If any Celtic deserves league MVP talk, it’s him.

Irving has improved considerably on that end, but can still get burnt defensively. Harrison Barnes did it constantly through three quarters on Monday by forcing pick-and-roll switches.

Horford, however, makes the largest impact defensively and is a force on the other end. His 14.2 points and 4.6 assists on an absurd 64.8 True Shooting Percentage, when combined with his defense, make him the most versatile and effective all-around player on the Celtics roster.

This shouldn’t undersell what Irving is doing, which is sensational. His 47-point performance on 22 shots has only been duplicated by 16 other players in league history.

If you had to point to a basketball reason for Irving’s rising status, this is it. Irving has been exactly as good as he was last year, except with enormous improvements in the clutch.

That qualifier — the final five minutes of a game within five points — provides an important framework to an otherwise vague concept. In the past decade, we’ve increasingly realized that the “clutch gene” probably doesn’t exist and is usually a perception developed through selection bias and small sample sizes.

That said, there are specific reasons why Irving may actually be a consistent killer in crunch time. He already has one of the league’s most important shots on his resume. Irving is a ruthless isolation scorer, likely better than anyone in the league, and being able to release an efficient shot out of a controllable situation like an isolation is crucial for clock management late in games. He might be better rested for these situations, too. He’s playing fewer minutes in Boston, and Bleacher Report’s Tom Haberstroh theorizes that Irving’s vegan diet is helping him maintain more endurance.

Those last two changes might be important, because Irving has never been this proficient in money time in the past. He may have a True Shooting Percentage near 65 in the clutch this season, but he’s only two years removed from a 46 percent one during the 2015-16 season. With a sample size as small as 17 games — of which only six have had “clutch” situations — Irving’s numbers could come crashing back towards his averages at any given moment.

We can acknowledge everything in the last section is true, while still appreciating Irving’s efforts in keeping Boston’s win streak alive. Irving torched Dallas late on Monday in a game that the Celtics really had no business winning, having trailed by 13 points in the fourth quarter. It was the sixth straight game where Boston started or fell behind in the second half, in several instances by double digit points.

Across 82 games, talent clearly shows itself. On any given night, though, a game can dramatically swing based off luck. That applies doubly to long win streaks like Boston’s 16 consecutive victories. The Celtics could have lost once in the middle and they would be the same team, just without the attention that this streak has brought. Instead, they’ve tied the fourth-longest win streak in franchise history, and “in franchise history” means more than usual when referring to an organization like the Celtics.

Without Irving treating clutch situations like Godzilla did Tokyo, Boston would have lost to Dallas, or Atlanta, or Golden State, or someone. Irving may not be able to duplicate these results forever, and others may capture the buzz of the MVP race, but it shouldn’t hold anyone back from enjoying this one-man tour de force that Irving has been conducting.