Irving injury dents Boston’s Eastern Conference chances

THE Boston Celtics have been dealt a huge blow on the eve of the NBA players after star point guard Kyrie Irving was ruled out for the remainder of the season with a knee injury.

In an Instragram post sent out on early Friday morning, the fivet-time NBA All-Star representative confirmed he will miss Boston’s entire playoff run after specialists determined his troublesome knee required surgery.

The team later announced that the injury layoff will be between four to five months.

The hardest thing to do sometimes is accept the uncontrollable things life throws at you. You try consistently to learn, grow, and prepare everyday to equip your mind, body, and spirit with tools to deal with some of those things, but I feel when those moments arise they all give you a sense of unfulfillment, simply because it puts some of your professional journey and goals on a brief hold. It's simply a test of your perseverance and Will, to be present, even in the wake of what's going on. In this case, finding out I have an infection in my knee is definitely a moment that I now accept and move past without holding on to the all the what ifs, proving the nay-Sayers completely f***ing wrong, and accomplishing the goals I've set out for the team and myself. This season was only a snapshot of what's to come from me. Trust Me. "The journey back to the top of Mt. Everest continues." #StandingRockSiouxTribe Let's go Celtics!! Celtics fans, I look forward to hearing how loud it gets in the TD Garden during the playoffs and experiencing how intense the environment gets. Thank you all!

A post shared by Kyrie Irving (@kyrieirving) on Apr 5, 2018 at 10:38am PDT

The injury to Irving saw the Celtics take a big hit in the betting markets.

Online bookmaker Sportsbet had Boston at the $5.50 mark to win the Eastern Conference title, but after the Irving injury news dropped the company moved the Cs out to the $12 quote.

Despite the bitter blow, Celtics president of basketball operations Danny Ainge told ESPN that the team isn’t ready to give up on the season just yet.

“It was so fun in training camp to watch Kyrie and Gordon (Hayward) and Al (Horford) play together,” he said.

“Our young guys were blossoming, and it was just amazing how quickly things were working.

“Then, as the season went on without Gordon, we got to see how well guys responded, and turned a terrible thing into a positive. Even after Kyrie went down, our guys had the mindset of ‘OK, we’re going to make a really good run here.’ But now we’ve lost Daniel (Theis), Marcus (Smart)and Kyrie.

“It’s part of what we go through. It’s not fun for anybody, but our guys won’t quit right now, I’ll tell you that.”