Celtics player reportedly told Blake Griffin not to sign here; Plus how Kyrie Irving continues to play you

In Jared Weiss latest piece for The Athletic which chronicalled what led to the Celtics trade of Kemba Walker yesterday there was this doozy from a source:

Brooklyn’s Blake Griffin asked a Celtics player if he should join the team midseason and was told not to come to Boston because of the apparent dysfunction.

Well I hope that unnamed player has either been traded already or will soon find a new home. Like, seriously? Attempting to sabotage your team from adding a player that could potentially help you win games is low. While isn't on par with throwing a game or not giving it your all, it's not all that far behind.

Your guess is as good as mine on who it was, assuming of course you buy Weiss' report and/ore believe his source.

But I'll tell you what, while its impossible for the Celtics to duplicate the KG era Ubuntu Celtics, they definitely need to actually get a group in here that actually take pride in playing for the Celtics. All you hear from past Celtics champions is how much it meant to them to play for the Celtics. If you're a player that would dissuade another player from joining the Celtics, your services are no longer necessary as far as I'm concerned.

And this goes back to the whole Kyrie stomping on lucky thing. Celtics legends were pissed, while the current Celtics didn't have shit to say about it. Were they scared of getting on Kyrie or Durant's bad side if they said something? Were they scared they wouldn't get hugs after the series ended?

Again you can't dupllicate the KG era Celtics, because for one KG was one of a kind. But Pierce, KG, Rondo, those guys didn't care the least whether their play or words upset rivals like LeBron, Wade, or Kobe. Its times like this where it's really a pity that if Ainge was going to trade one of the valuable Nets picks for a win now guy he didn't trade for Jimmy Butler instead of Kyrie.

Not all players in todays NBA are soft. Butler wouldn't have been fine with Kyrie's stunt. Neither would the guy still on the Heat's roster likely due to a wink-wink deal he signed with them back in 2010, Udonis Haslem. It really is embarassing how Kyrie Irving's former teammates In Boston all just kiss the ring and won't stand up for their team.

Kyrie masterfully played the media, Celtics fans and their players during that 1st round series. Instead of Games 3 and 4 being about him finally returning to Boston (like countless others before him), he switched the narrative to "Boston is racist." And Boston's predominant white media ate that up. They all wrote about Boston's racism and didn't dare say a bad word about Kyrie. So what if Kyrie himself when he was on the Celtics had said he'd never witnessed racism in Boston neither as an opponent or as a player. Didn't matter that someone like Kendrick Perkins said he never witnessed any racism in Boston and that all cities have racism. That his home state of Texas has racsim.

The current players on the Celtics let Kyrie's comments slide. Irving stunk up the joint in that first game back in Boston in Game 3, and had nothing to say after that Celtics win, but he was right back at playing everyone following his solid Game 4. His stomping on the Celtics logo was a premeditated move to say FU to Boston and he didn't fear in the least any blow back from his former teammates.

People wondered if Kyrie wanted to provoke an incident he could call racist from the Boston crowd after his Game 2 comments. And whether the the knucklehead who threw the Dasani bottle saw Kyrie's FU stomp or not, Irving got his incident right afterwards. Of course it didn't matter if the idiot fan threw the water bottle because he was racist or because he just despised Kyrie, no different than how Boston fans hated Bill Laimbeer.

The water bottle fan was white, so Kyrie went back in on the racist Boston angle. And the predominantly white Boston media ate it up again. Many fans too. If you fell for Kyrie's recent mind games, you've now been played by him twice. The first time when he said he'd re-sign here is not your fault. But, fool me once, shame on me. Fool me twice, shame on you. I'm sure Irving is laughing his ass off at how much he was able to manipulate between the media, fans, and Celtics players.
The Celtics have become a bit of a laughing stock of the NBA since Kyrie masterfully played everyone. NBA observers joked that Kyrie made Danny Ainge retire. White Boston writers and fans are insistent that the Celtics hire a Black head coach. Doesn't matter that the Celtics have let the NBA in terms of diversity in their history. First Black player. First Black head coach. 5 Black head coaches. 1 Black Head of Basketball Operations. Nope you have White writers getting on their soap boxes saying Boston HAS to hire a Black coach.

They would never have said this prior to Kyrie mind f#cking the heck out of them. It's would almost be comical if the joke wasn't on the Celtics players, fans, and Boston. Whoever the Celtics hire to be their next head coach deserves to not have some stupid asterisk next to his name. Celtics coaches both Black and White such as Bill Russell, KC Jones, Doc Rivers, Tommy Heinsohn, and Red Auerbach were all hired becuase they were the best men for the job. Don't disrespect our next coach by adding the potential for idiots to say, "Well if he wasn't Black he wouldn't have gotten the job." That's not fair to Sam Cassell, Ime Udoka, Chauncey Billups, whomever.

But people are still letting Kyrie play them like yoyo's. When Dennis Rodman and Isiah Thomas said their comments that Larry Bird would be just another basketball player if he wasn't White, everyone on the Celtics and in Boston came to Bird's defense. Not only did the current Celtics players not come to the defense of Boston after Kyrie's comments (Save for the injured Jaylen Brown. See below), but they didn't do or say anyhing after his disrespect of their team with the logo stomp. And just to make sure they didn't do anything, Kyrie made sure to double down that systemic racism had to be the reason why that water bottle was thrown. KG, Perkins, Cedric Maxwell, and Big Baby all had something critical to say back to Kyrie, while the current players didn't do anything. Maybe Kyrie was a leader after all in Boston? Because his former teammates on the Celtics still seem to be deferring to him.

Again Kyrie Irving isn't dumb. He knew what he was doing. To his credit, at least one player, Jaylen Brown, didn't fall for Kyrie's games.

I think that racism should be addressed, and/or systemic racism should be addressed in the city of Boston, and it also should be addressed in the United States. However, I do not like the manner it was brought up, in terms of centering around a playoff game. It bothers me if — the construct of racism, right? It's used as a crutch or an opportunity to execute a personal gain.

The Celtics need leaders in the front office, in the coaching ranks and on the floor. My first hope was that Wyc and company would have been wise enough to bring Kevin Garnett aboard as their general manager with a part ownership share. A real leader that won't get played by the opponent, but will bark back. Unfortunately the team already had decided to keep the status quo and promote Brad. Not to say that Stevens won't do a good job in his new role, but that was an opportunity right there to shoot for the moon.

Now it's up to the new coach and players to put some fight back into the Celtics. The rest of the NBA world loves laughing at the Celtics. They love to see the greatest winner in history down. The last thing we need is for our own players, fans, and media to be more worried about making those same people that love seeing us down happy. No one is going to give the Celtics anything. They need to fight for it. Hopefully this season's team will have some fighters.