DALLAS Mavericks star Kyrie Irving has discussed his difficult relationship with Boston at length ever since the NBA Finals matchup with the Boston Celtics was set.
The Mavs playmaker and Boston have quite a past between his failed two-year stint at TD Garden, the infamous logo stomp, and his 10-game losing streak against the C’s.
Dallas Mavericks star Kyrie Irving’s difficult relationship with Boston has been one of the main 2024 NBA Finals storylinesCredit: Getty
Irving became a villain in Beantown after his two-year stint with the Boston Celtics between 2017-2019Credit: Getty
The guard’s ties to Boston date further back, though, as he attended numerous summer camps at Boston University, his dad Drederick’s alma mater, in his childhoodCredit: Getty
Denis Wolff, the BU men’s basketball team’s head coach at the time, says Irving stood out among his peersCredit: Getty
But Irving’s ties to Beantown actually date further back than his signing with the Celtics in 2017 which put him on a path to becoming a local villain – as the eight-time All-Star pointed out himself after Game 2.
“My dad is here, he played at Boston University,” the 6-foot-2 guard, 32, said as he once again addressed dealing with the hostility from the C’s faithful.
“So there has to be respect there because if anything happens to my family while I’m here, then it goes way beyond the game, you know.”
Irving himself spent a lot of his childhood playing hoops at Boston University where his dad, Drederick, had become a local basketball legend.
“He was a pleasure to have at the camp,” Dennis Wolff, 69, the Terriers head coach at the time, told The U.S. Sun.
“You could see how much he loves basketball.”
Drederick remained close to his alma mater after captaining one of the best teams in Terriers history and rewriting the program’s record book between 1984 and 1988.
During his time at the Charles River campus, he also met his future wife and Kyrie’s mother, Elizabeth, who would suddenly die when the would-be No. 1 overall NBA pick was four.
The former BU guard left the school as the all-time scoring leader with 1,931 points and with the program’s MVP award having played with Boston in the 1988 NCAA Tournament.
He was inducted into the BU Athletic Hall of Fame in 1995 and is one of seven Terriers to have his No. 11 jersey retired.
Kyrie Irving hits back at Celtics fan booing during NBA Finals and claims ‘I thought they would be a little louder’.mp4
As Kyrie started showing his basketball talent, Drederick took his son to many of his pro-am and adult games while also trying to put him in places where he could get high-quality coaching, Wolff said.
As part of that effort, each summer between fourth or fifth to eighth grade they took a four-hour drive from North Jersey to Boston so Kyrie could attend the Terriers’ basketball camp.
And the young Irving quickly caught everybody’s eye with his determination and natural ability to hoop, Wolff recalled
“He hadn’t hit a growth spurt, he was a smaller guy but incredibly skilled for his age and never wanted to leave the gym,” the ex-BU head coach said.
NBA Finals schedule
Thur 6 June – Game 1, 8.30pm ET – Dallas Mavericks 89-107 Boston Celtics
Sun 9 June – Game 2, 8pm ET – Dallas Mavericks 98-105 Boston Celtics
Wed 12 June – Game 3, 8.30pm ET – Boston Celtics at Dallas Mavericks
Fri 14 June – Game 4, 8.30pm ET – Boston Celtics at Dallas Mavericks
Mon 17 June – Game 5, 8.30pm ET – Dallas Mavericks at Boston Celtics
Thur 20 June – Game 6, 8.30pm ET – Boston Celtics at Dallas Mavericks
Sun 23 June – Game 7, 8pm ET – Dallas Mavericks at Boston Celtics
“He was someone that looked like he was going to have a bright future.”
Wolff added: “At 10 o’clock, 11 o’clock at night, he was still chasing the kids over to the dorm because he was still in the gym playing.”
Irving’s love for basketball sprouted from Drederick’s and, by various accounts, he badly wanted to follow in his father’s footsteps.
In fourth grade, the now-Mavericks playmaker told his pops “I know without you I would not be me” and thanked him for teaching him basketball in a touching Father’s Day card.
“I have a long way to go. I want to follow you,” he wrote, per The New York Daily News.
At that point in his life, Kyrie thought he would eventually play for BU, he would tell The Boston Globe after the Cleveland Cavaliers drafted him out of Duke years later.
The Globe reported Wolff even offered him a scholarship as a fifth-grader, but the former Terrier coach said no formal offer had ever been made.
Wolff suggested the story must have “taken on a life of its own” after he told Kyrie at one camp that BU would love to have him as a player in the future, or after predicting he would be recruited by top programs in the country in a chat with Drederick a few years later.
The fact that the young Irving saw himself in a Terriers jersey at some point in his life proves how much he admired his father, though, the ex-BU head coach said.
“I think it was because his dad loves BU so much … and he was so much in awe of his dad,” Wolff said.
Wolff said his memories of the Irvings are overly positive with Kyrie and Drederick being “two of the nicest people you could ever be around.”
He’s also not surprised that the Mavericks star, who plays in his second Finals having won the championship with the Cavaliers in 2016, could go down as one of the most skilled NBA players ever.
“He’s a product of all the work that he put in and his father was an unbelievable parent,” Wolff said. “I’m just a fan.”
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