Kyrie Irving’s injury forced the rest of the Celtics to step up. Are they better without him?

As the Boston Celtics have thrived in the second half of the season and through two-and-a-half rounds of playoff basketball, an ever-so dapper Kyrie Irving has watched on from the sidelines. Irving developed an infection in his leg and had screws removed from his surgically-repaired knee to deal with his ailment. But a projected four to five months of inaction have caused the Celtics to learn and grow without the star point guard they had traded for last summer.

Boston was incredible early in the season with Irving running the show. The Celtics leaped out to a 17-2 start to the season — a run no one expected after Gordon Hayward’s season-ending injury in the opening game — and their star guard was the focal point of their success. He averaged 24.4 dazzling points per game and was there for Boston in the clutch, time and time again. The Celtics had given the Cavaliers a massive trade package for the all-star point guard last summer, and he lived up to everything Danny Ainge could have dreamed of.

Boston finished the season 9-6 after Irving opted for surgery, and then won a pair of tough series in the playoffs. First, Boston outlasted Giannis Antetokounmpo and the Milwaukee Bucks in seven games, then defeated Joel Embiid, Ben Simmons, and the Philadelphia 76ers in five. The Celtics are now in the fight of their life against a Cleveland team looking to make its fourth consecutive NBA Finals appearance. The series is tied up at two-apiece, and the best player the Celtics have put on the floor is Al Horford.

These Celtics play lockdown defense. They play through Horford, but they also play through Terry Rozier, who averaged 14.7 regular-season points per game after Irving’s surgery and is averaging 17 points in the playoffs. They play through Jayson Tatum, who leads the team in scoring at 18 points per game in the playoffs, and Jaylen Brown, right behind at 17.8. They play offense by committee with six players averaging double-digit scoring in the postseason.

And while Irving should be ecstatic that his team has made an incredible playoff run with such a limited roster, it’s also fair to wonder whether he’s at all concerned that a franchise that gave up so much to get him one summer ago could enjoy this level of success without him.

Irving is one of the four most gifted scorers available in the league. Put him right up there with James Harden and Kevin Durant and Stephen Curry. He batters opponent’s ankles before knocking down a three or contorting his body to finish at the rim with extra jelly. Irving is cut from the same cloth as Kobe Bryant — he’s a closer, the player who sealed Cleveland’s 2016 NBA championship with that iconic step-back three-pointer over Curry in Game 7. We know what he does. The man flat out gets buckets, full stop, period, end of discussion.

The Celtics scored 108.7 points per 100 possessions in the more than 2,000 minutes Irving logged this season, 6.8 more than they scored without him, according to data from NBA.com. That’s what you get when you have a scorer as electrifying as Irving on the floor. Steve Kerr raved about the luxury of giving the ball to Kevin Durant — a walking bucket — when a Warriors’ play breaks down. Brad Stevens could share a similar sentiment in regards to his all-star guard.

Irving is a demon in an isolation; Harden might be the only tougher one-on-one check in the league. His effective field goal percentage of 50.3 percent on those plays was fifth-best among qualified players and clocked in higher than Durant, LeBron James, Russell Westbrook, and others.

There are five players on the floor at all times, and each need to be satisfied to be fully effective. In the words of Chris Bosh, who detailed the difficulties Kevin Love would face in his first year playing alongside LeBron James, they want to have their cake and eat it, too.

Irving averaged 24.4 points through 60 games this season. Boston had to make those points up, and they did it on both ends. The Celtics averaged an additional 1.5 steals per game with Rozier, a tough-nosed defender, starting in Irving’s place. The scoring breakdown spread across the roster. Marcus Morris picked up his scoring. Both Brown and Tatum saw spikes in their offensive production, and Rozier emerged as a legitimate NBA starter. Even though the Raptors darted up the standings to claim the No. 1 seed, the Celtics held onto No. 2 as their roster withered away with injuries to Marcus Smart and Daniel Theis.

The Celtics have also been just as good, if not a better defensive team in Irving’s absence. Boston allowed just 101.4 points per 100 possessions before Irving’s final game on March 12. At the time, that was the best mark in the league. But after a string of injuries, the Celtics finished from March 13 on with a defensive rating of 102.2, just the fifth-best mark in the league. Boston was also without Marcus Smart during that stretch. The Celtics are four points per 100 possessions worse on defense with Irving on the floor and 3.6 points per 100 defensive possessions better with Smart in the game, according to data from NBA.com.

This isn’t a discussion crafted out of thin air. It’s one that has been spoken about in the basketball world. Jalen Rose touched on the Celtics’ level of success without Irving on Tuesday’s episode of his own Jalen & Jacoby Show.

Irving is a ball-dominant scoring guard. He’s not necessarily a ball stopper, like one former New York Knicks all-star, but he does require the ball in his hands to be optimally effective. When he was healthy, Irving used 30.7 percent of Boston’s offensive percentage, the 10th-highest usage rate in the league and less than one percentage point from passing James for fifth. After his surgery, no Celtics player has used more than 25.9 percent of offensive possessions. In the playoffs, the wealth has been shared even more.

Crunch time is defined as the final five minutes of a game that is within five or fewer points, but NBA.com’s stats page gives you options. You can turn that five minutes into four minutes, or even focus in as close as one minute, or 30 seconds. In games decided by five or fewer points in the final minute of a regular season game, Irving used 55.9 percent of Boston’s offensive possessions. That’s more than James, Harden, Westbrook, and any other player in the league.

When you have a player with the rare killer instinct that Irving has, you give him the ball and live with the result. Yet since Irving’s surgery and subsequent departure from the team, those crunch-time responsibilities have been split almost evenly between Brown, Rozier and Tatum. And in the playoffs, it’s been Horford who’s been the beneficiary of Stevens’s genius in late-game situations.

The Celtics shot 47.5 percent in the final minute of games that came down to the wire when Irving was healthy. They were 16-12 in those games. They went 3-3 in those kinds of games without Irving and shot 45 percent. In the playoffs, Boston is 5-1 when the game is decided in the final minute. In those final 60 seconds, the Celtics are shooting at a 60 percent clip.

That’s not to say they’re perfect in crunch-time. Rozier has taken some out-of-control shots with the game on the line — shots you’d much rather Irving, a battle-tested, battle-proven scorer, getting up. But the Celtics have been quite successful despite their depleted roster.

Former players tend to provide the best insight into an athlete’s thought process. Rose rose a few questions of his own.

“You can’t now return to the Boston Celtics, if you’re Kyrie, and be that high-usage player that scores 25-plus points, that has five assists and every time there’s an out-of-bounds play, or a big shot, they draw up the play for you,” Rose said. “The other 14 guys gonna look at the coach and be like, ‘Hey, what about me? I’m (Terry) Rozier, I’m (Jayson) Tatum, I’m (Jaylen) Brown, I’m (Al) Horford. I earned the equity last year when he wasn’t out here to get these opportunities.’

“So his usage and all his numbers automatically come down. Now, the other part of that: It’s not the best look for you when your former team (the Cleveland Cavaliers) is in the conference finals, and your current team is in the conference finals, without you.”

This is probably the best place to mention Irving has been an incredible teammate. Every time the camera pans to the bench after a big Celtics’ play, Irving is up — recovering knee and all — cheering his teammates on. There doesn’t appear to be any animosity toward the Boston team that is on an incredible run without him. It’s all smiles and laughs, supporting his guys as they attempt to overthrow The King.

But the fact of the matter remains that the Celtics are doing all of this without him. And his injury, plus a looming max payday only creates more questions. Irving has one year left on his contract before he is eligible to opt-out and become a free agent. And after Curry, Westbrook, and Harden each commanded designed veteran exception contracts of five years at an excess of $200 million, Irving is in line for a max contract of his own. The Celtics can’t give him the supermax after the Cavaliers traded him, but Irving should be in line for a five-year max contract extension starting at $30 million with annual raises.

That’s a lot of cash and time for the Celtics to commit to a player they reached the Eastern Conference Finals without.

What’s clear is that the Boston team trudging its way through the East is nowhere near its final form. Brown and Tatum have light years of progress to make before reaching the all-star level they’re both fully capable of. Gordon Hayward literally hasn’t played a full quarter with the Celtics. How he fits back into the equation off of a gruesome leg injury with Brown and Tatum so quickly proving their worth is another question. Irving is an all-world talent who has levels to his own game he’s yet to unlock. Ainge probably still isn’t finished wheeling and dealing, and who knows what new out-of-bounds plays Stevens will craft in the summers ahead. Boston is in the best position of any franchise in the league, and it’s not even close.

What’s also clear is that this Celtics team has played better without Kyrie Irving than almost everyone could have anticipated. But are they a championship team? We’ll just have to wait and see.