Robb: Irving surgery hurts short term, but hidden blessing for 2019 chances

One of the biggest question marks about Kyrie Irving as a player has always been his health. Irving has struggled with staying on his court dating back to his time at Duke (he saw the floor for just 11 games during his only season in Durham). The five-time All-Star has played 60 games or less in three of his six NBA seasons in Cleveland, which included various injuries to his knee, finger, toe, wrist, and shoulder. A fractured left kneecap ended his 2015 NBA Finals early as the Cavs eventually fell to the Warriors in six games.

His first season in Boston officially came to a close on Thursday after the team announced he would undergo season-ending surgery to remove screws in that same left kneecap to address a bacterial infection that had formed. He is expected to make a recovery in four-to-five months, which would put him on schedule to be healthy for the start of the 2018-19 regular season.

On the surface, the timing for the Irving surgery seems pretty brutal for Boston. The playoffs are a week away and the C’s had a puncher’s chance of getting out of the East with a healthy Irving in the fold. Without him, they will be lucky to get out of the second round thanks to the laundry list of injuries they are dealing with.

However, a closer look at the situation and comments from Danny Ainge indicate Irving’s knee maintenance issue was a ticking time bomb, which was set to go off at any point during the next couple years. That fact in itself makes the timing of Irving’s pending surgery good news from a big picture perspective for the team.

Consider all the pieces of the puzzle when you look at Irving’s situation:

1. A January report from Joe Vardon of Cleveland.com indicated Irving needed a clean-up procedure on his knee and was potentially going to use it to force his way out of Cleveland last summer. A lot of the focus on the hold up in the Cavs-Celtics deal pertained to the status of Isaiah Thomas, but the status of Irving's knee may have proven to be a negotiating point for the Celtics as well when the deal was on the verge of collapse. Thomas obviously was damaged goods, but the same could be said for Irving, to a far lesser degree. The knee situation clearly was going to hurt his trade value no matter where he was sent.

2.  Danny Ainge confirming Irving would likely need surgery at some point to clean up the knee in an interview with 98.5 The Sports Hub’s Toucher and Rich last month. "He has some surgery that may need to happen," Ainge declared. "But maybe not this summer. Maybe the following summer or maybe the summer after that. I think that he could probably do it any time he wanted, but I'm not sure that it's needed at this moment."   

3. Irving wanted to avoid having any kind of surgery on his knee. Here are his comments last month after pulling himself from the Pacers game on March 11th at halftime about the prospect of looming knee surgery. “I don't know. I hope not,” he said. “I’ve been that road before. I’ve had a fractured kneecap already. So I think being smart about it probably will put me in a better position not to be out for a long period of time. That’s the last thing I want to do.”

4. The Celtics were fully aware of Irving’s looming knee issues at the time of the initial trade with the Cavs. "There was a lot of discussions (at the time of the trade)," Ainge told Toucher & Rich last month. "And that was a big part of it going forward too was Kyrie had the injury. So we knew there would be maintenance issues, but his long-term prognostication is good. He's going to have some maintenance issues here and there. We knew coming into this year that he probably wasn't going to be an 82-game guy. He was going to be a 72-, 75-game guy in order to keep him fresh for the playoffs. And that’s what it's been. And we're just extra cautious. We have the good fortune of being extra cautious right now. And we want him fresh and healthy. And we think that he will be, come playoff time."

If one connects the dots here, it’s fair to assume that: 1) The Celtics knew a surgery was coming, and 2) Kyrie wanted to hold off on having that surgery as long as possible.

Clearly, last offseason would have been the best window to clean up the knee from a playing availability standpoint, but obviously, both sides didn’t consider it necessary just yet. If Irving didn’t want to do the surgery, the team wasn’t going to force it on him days after acquiring the star guard.

In the meantime, the Celtics obviously did whatever they could to help Irving manage his knee situation during the year. They did everything right on the surface. His minutes per game were cut significantly from the previous couple years. The training staff gave him days off for bumps and bruises as they popped up. Rest days were added in. Despite these precautions, the knee pain clearly became too much for Irving to deal with by March due to the bacterial infection that was uncovered in the first knee procedure.

If you look at it from a big picture perspective, the timing of the issue is fortunate for Boston. The equation changed for this team when Gordon Hayward went down on opening night anyway. Any dreams of winning an NBA title in 2018 were realistically gone once he went down. A deep postseason run was certainly possible in a seemingly wide-open East without Hayward, but anything beyond that would be a pipe dream given the talent level in Houston and Golden State.

If Irving somehow managed to make it through this year without issues, the hardware issue was bound to pop up at some point when you consider the way Ainge discussed it last month. Can you imagine if the screws needed to be removed at some point in the middle of the 2018-19 regular season? Another season would have been down the drain for Boston at that point, given the lengthy recovery timetable. Getting it taken care of now is a blessing in disguise, especially if the knee is structurally sound as the team indicates is good news from a long-term viewpoint. The timing of the April surgery puts him on pace to be ready for training camp next fall.

The sense of urgency grows now for the 2018-19 season, without a doubt. With Hayward’s return, Irving’s final year on a discount deal and a number of other players on expiring team-friendly deals (Terry Rozier, Marcus Morris), it will be intriguing to see just how aggressive Ainge gets in trying to take advantage of his underpriced talent pool before they hit the open market.

For now, Irving’s pending surgery gives the Celtics one less thing to worry about for next year. While Irving’s knee will still need to be managed for the long haul, a clean slate for the 2018-19 season on the injury front is the best thing this team can hope for when it comes to their championship odds. Thursday’s decision gets them one step closer to that.