It was an NBA playoff battle between Duke one-and-dones.

What theater. You couldn’t turn it off, the first game of the first round of the playoffs between the second-seeded Boston Celtics and 7th-seed Brooklyn Nets, both teams good enough to win the NBA title.

Why were they meeting so early in the postseason? Because the Nets played more than half their games without star Kyrie Irving and had to get one play-in victory to reach the best-of-seven series against the Celtics.

Who would a true-blue Tar Heel root for in such an encounter? Well, considering I am a lifelong Celtics fan and actually like their emerging star Jayson Tatum, another Dukie, I was rooting for Boston.

Irving teams with former NBA MVP Kevin Durant to give Brooklyn the best one-two scoring combination in the league. If they are both clicking, the Nets are almost unbeatable.

All I can say is I am glad UNC never faced Duke with Irving in 2011, as he sat out 26 games with a toe injury. Tatum also stayed one year for the Blue Devils. The Heels lost two out of three to Tatum’s team in 2017 before going on to win Roy Williams’ third NCAA championship.

Irving is by far the more controversial of the two, unwilling to play second banana to LeBron James when they both won an NBA ring in Cleveland, then bolting for Boston for two years. Since then, he has joined the Native American Lakota tribe and raises money for them.

After signing with the Nets in 2019, Irving missed dozens of games with injuries. He only played 29 games this season because he was not vaccinated, and New York state required that of its pro athletes playing indoors until recently lifting it.

Irving led the Nets back from a 15-point deficit and drained what looked like a long 3-point dagger in the last minute. But the Celtics rallied remarkably in the dying seconds and pulled out the game on a layup by Tatum that just beat the buzzer. Irving finished with 39 points, Tatum 31.

These two superstars, both 5-star recruits who honed their games long after leaving Duke, will keep playing in a weird series when one NBA title contender will actually be gone after the first round.

Until that happens, I will be glued to the tube rooting for my Dukie to stop the all-offense, pretty much no-defense Dukie on the other side.

 

Featured image via Associated Press

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