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Kyrie Irving Says There’s No Defense In Today’s NBA

Last year’s Boston Celtics had been one of the biggest success stories of the 2017-18 NBA season.

A young team that lost both their All Stars, Gordon Hayward and Kyrie Irving ,who both underwent season-ending surgeries, made the Conference Finals nontheless. Boston’s young core (Tatum, Brown, Rozier) played brilliantly and made the fans almost forget about Irving and Hayward.

This season, with the two stars healthy and playing again, everyone expected the Celtics to be the East’s top dog and a contender. But in reality, the team is struggling. They are currently only  5th in the east with a 9-7 record. Not alarmingly bad, but certainly worse than expected.

Kyrie Irving was now asked about the recent slump of contenders like the Celtics, Rockets and Warriors and he had an interesting response.

 

“I think it’s just not a lot of defense being played,” said Kyrie Irving. “Teams are scoring like it’s the 1960s or ’70s. It’s 132-112, 142-121. There’s no defense. You go into a Utah-Boston game and it’s 86-92, you see the difference in the effort every single night.

“I get it from an NBA player standpoint, the amount of games that we play, but sometimes you have to make guys miss. We’re all NBA players, if you see an open look at the rim, I’m pretty sure we’re gonna knock it down over 50 percent of the time if it’s wide open. There’s no defense and just [no] effort. It’s really what it comes down to — nobody should be scoring that many points.”

Kyrie Irving says there's no defense being played in the NBA #Celtics pic.twitter.com/RhWDPE6H7r

— gary washburn (@GwashburnGlobe) November 19, 2018