Duke Blue Devils: Kyrie Irving Still Enigma in Pacers Sweep
Former Duke Blue Devils star Kyrie Irving and his team got out of the first round of the playoffs against the Pacers in four games in a somehow still unsettling fashion.
Maybe I just don’t get former Duke Blue Devils point guard Kyrie Irving. Everytime I think he’s made it to the elite plateau of the NBA, he has a game to suggest that he is not. When I am ready to write him off as a potential fraud, he becomes great again. Perhaps it is time for me to understand that this is just what Irving is going to look like.
Irving’s great 2016-7 season suggested that he had finally gotten it. Assists were back up to where they were two years ago. Best field goal percentage of his career. More three point attempts at around 40% from the field. Four points per game better than his career average. Best foul shooting percentage of his career.
Yet all that was hard to watch in the Indiana series. Irving had double figures in all the games, but it was more how he was doing it. Only Game 2 witnessed truly great Irving, but it is not fair to expect thirty-seven points per game every night.
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The way he went about it could be less strange. His three point shot was inaccurate in three of the four games against Indiana. To compensate, he simply shot more volume. He generally shot 40% from the field. He needed twenty-seven shots to get twenty-three points in Game 1. He needed twenty-five shots to get twenty-eight points in the series finale. Other teams might not give him as many chances as the Pacers did (or maybe they will, but we’ll get to that).
As a guard, Irving’s second best way of contributing to the score is through the assist column. While we should not fool ourselves into believing that he somehow runs the team, a few well-placed passes can undo some of the damage of a bad shooting night. Irving had six assists in Game 1 during just such a performance, only to have that number head lower to zero in Game 4.
The lesson seems to be that this is just who Irving is. He can score points and achieve impressive totals, but efficiency is the exception and not the rule. Right now, the Cavs are fine with that. After all, they just swept the seven seed Pacers and are waiting for their next opponent. The problem is the margin of error against the Pacers was so much smaller than it should have been.
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It may not even be a problem against Toronto or Milwaukee. If I could pick a team or them to play, it would be the Bucks. The matchups in that one have to be more fun. Can Giannis Antetokounmpo provide more trouble than Paul George did (defensive, not offensive end)? If so, will Irving be ready to take on responsibility for winning the game? Or will he go 1 of 7 from three again?