Boston Celtics: Kyrie Irving out 3-6 weeks

A prolonged knee soreness has kept Kyrie Irving on the sidelines. After undergoing knee surgery to help relieve some of the pain, it was announced that he will be out for quite some time.

Over the last few weeks, Boston Celtics point guard Kyrie Irving has been battling some knee soreness. Seeking other opinions, he decided to go through a small surgery to help relieve some of the pain. After going through the “minimally invasive” procedure, it was reported that he will be sidelined for 3-6 weeks while he recovers.

This is a major blow to the Celtics, as they’ve already struggled to find any sort of injury relief. Jaylen Brown, Al Horford, Gordon Hayward, Marcus Smart and now Irving highlight a lot of the injuries this team has seen.

Boston’s final game is against the Brooklyn Nets on April 11. Given Irving’s timetable to return, that would mean that we will not see him for the remainder of the season. There’s about two weeks left of the regular season, so at the earliest, we won’t be seeing him for at least another week.

The playoffs start on April 14, which again would put Irving as not available for return. At the earliest we can see him possibly return middle-to-late first round or any round after that if they were to advance.

The outlook of Boston’s future success this season has looked dark these last few weeks. When Hayward went down, the light slowly got darker. These last few weeks the injuries have piled up and suddenly a once bright outlook feels as if there’s a big cloud hovering over everything.

However, Boston has not given up despite all the injuries around them. Players have been stepping up in a major way in the absence of key starters. Marcus Morris has been on a surge, Terry Rozier has been pivotal while both Irving and Smart have been out and Jayson Tatum has continued to show he’s one of the best rookies in the 2017 NBA Draft.

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It’s not all that bad in Boston right now. The past five games they’re 3-2, beating the Oklahoma City Thunder, Portland Trail Blazers and the Orlando Magic. The Blazers have been one of the hottest teams in the NBA and the Thunder are very talented. Beating those two teams is not an easy task.

Moving forward, Boston will need to continue to find ways to win games. By now, it can be assumed that they’ll be finishing the season with the second seed in the East, which would put them up against the Miami Heat if the season ended today.

They’ll need to be healthy going into the playoffs because the Heat will not be an easy opponent. Erik Spoelstra is arguably one of the best coaches in the NBA and they always find ways to win when it feels as if they don’t have the talent necessary to win big games.

Don’t get me wrong, they’re a well built team, but when Whiteside is out for a lot of the games due to an injury, you wouldn’t expect a team led by Goran Dragic to bring them to this point in the season. You have to give credit where credit is due and both the Celtics and the Heat have shown that they can find ways to win despite the injuries that have piled up.

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Boston needs to get healthy if it wants to find any sort of success in the playoffs. Losing its best scorer for an extended period of time will not be easy to replace. These next 3-6 weeks will be interesting to see how success the Celtics will find. For now, we wish for a fast and healthy recovery for the All-Star point guard.