Boston Celtics: 3 goals for Kyrie Irving in 2018-19

1. Add an MVP award to an already extensive trophy cabinet

Although his career is just seven years deep, Irving has already stocked his trophy cabinet with a serious array of awards: No. 1 draft pick, NBA champion, five time All-Star, All-Star Game MVP, All-Rookie First Team, All-NBA Third Team, four-time Player of the Week and three-time Player of the Month, to name a few.

The one regular season award he hasn’t claimed appeared within reach last season, before that nagging knee soreness made that prospect disappear.

Despite becoming a lock for an All-Star position during his stint in Cleveland, he was never close to contention for MVP with LeBron on his squad. Now in Boston, Irving is the lead act with Hayward, though he without doubt has the X-factor required to be able to reach MVP status ahead of his returning teammate.

While the previous suggestion that Irving manage his workload through the regular season may appear to contradict this individual goal, it is in fact doing the opposite, as a healthy Kyrie will ideally be able to continue to gather momentum throughout the 82-game season.

On a squad that would appear a lock to win 55 games, he will without doubt be among the top candidates. If he can remain on the floor for the majority of the year while seeing a slight bump up from the 24.4 points and 5.1 assists per contest he put up in 2017-18, then the MVP chants echoing through the TD Garden during the season may just become a reality.