Kyrie Irving talks long-term future with the Celtics

A lot has been made about Kyrie Irving’s future with the Celtics this summer. From choosing to forego negotiations pertaining to a contract extension to rumors he may want to head home to New York (with Jimmy Butler), it seems many people already have Irving with one foot out the door.

Irving did his part to quash some of the concerns of the Boston faithful in a piece written by ESPN’s Jackie MacMullan late last week, and he doubled down on his comments in a Media Day interview with Celtics.com on Monday.

“I don’t want to go with a war of twisted words and, ‘he could have said this, he could have said that.’ Honestly, I’ll leave that to the media, but my job is to really cement myself as the leader of the Boston Celtics, along with all of our other great players and really relish in that opportunity,” Irving said. “Obviously it’s everybody else’s job to look forward to my future before I can, so I just really thought it was important to make sure it’s known that this franchise is really built for the next few years of being at the top-tier of teams in the league.”

“Who wouldn’t want to be a part of that?,” he continued. “What more could you ask for from an organization to really elevate your game? When you want to be on the same lineage of greatness as the guys that have come before you, there are times where I have thought about having #11 in the rafters, hopefully, one day. That’s a dream. It wasn’t so much like that coming out but it’s the truth. I feel that way about my teammates, I feel that way about the organization and I’m looking forward to the challenge this year.”

While Irving still remains non-committal and hasn’t definitively said he’ll re-sign next summer, he’s certainly making it hard to believe he’s ready to pick up and go elsewhere.

Hopefully a successful 2018-19 season will ease Celtics fans minds once and for all.