Kyrie Irving struggled in his long-awaited return to the TD Garden floor with fans in attendance in the Celtics’ 125-119 win over the Brooklyn Nets in Game 3 of the best-of-seven series on Friday night.
Irving heard from Garden fans as soon as he took the floor in warmups, waving on the boos at one point of the night. He did not find his rhythm on the court as he heard boos and chants from the Boston crowd throughout much of his team-high 41 minutes. The All-Star scored just 16 points on 6-of-17 shooting, his first poor outing of the series. However, Nets coach Steve Nash said he did not believe the Garden atmosphere impacted Irving’s play.
“I don’t think the crowd limited Ky,” Nash said postgame. “Yeah, I don’t think so. I don’t know about disappointed. I just think we all feel like we could have played better defensively. We didn’t get stops when it mattered and for large portions of the game. We gave up 125 points. It’s just too many big quarters for them — they had high 20s or 30s all four quarters. Not a great performance but it could be good for us. So new, for us to face a little adversity to go through some of these battles and challenges and pick ourselves up and look over some things tomorrow and come back on Sunday.”
Irving reflected on his emotions and the crowd reaction during his performance after the loss.
“I mean, it’s basketball,” he said. “I’ve been in a few environments in my life so like I said, as long as it’s strictly the nature of basketball out there and there’s nothing extra, I’m cool with it. Just get some preparation with the team tomorrow and get prepared for Sunday. Going to keep it straight basketball.”
With TD Garden capacity limits increasing from 5,000 to over 17,000 fans starting on Saturday, Irving knows that a louder Boston crowd awaits him on Sunday night in a pivotal Game 4.
“We’re expecting a bigger crowd on Sunday,” Irving acknowledged. “Happy it was a great start to seeing what this environment is going to be like. Just looking forward to the challenge.”
While Irving will likely need to deal with plenty of chants and extra attention once again with more fans in attendance, James Harden believes it won’t impact his team’s focus.
“Not one bit of a distraction,” Harden said of the Garden crowd in Game 3. “That wasn’t something that even crossed our minds. We have to play better as a unit, and we will Game 4. This thing isn’t gonna get easier for us. It’s gonna be difficult. We expect that. Next game, it’s gonna be a lot more fans. So we’ve got to take upon the challenge of being detailed on our coverages on both ends and whatever we’ve gotta do, and just take it possession by possession. We get leads like that, we’ve got to be even more locked in, even more detailed. We let them line up threes, let them line up shots and they made them tonight
The Celtics and Nets tip off Game 4 at 7 p.m. on Sunday night.
"crowd" - Google News
May 29, 2021 at 11:37AM
https://ift.tt/3c2JLhx
Kyrie Irving reacts to TD Garden crowd in Game 3: ‘It was a great start to seeing what this environment’s gon - MassLive.com
"crowd" - Google News
https://ift.tt/2YpUyMI
https://ift.tt/2KQD83I
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "Kyrie Irving reacts to TD Garden crowd in Game 3: ‘It was a great start to seeing what this environment’s gon - MassLive.com"
Post a Comment