Quinn: Unpacking the narrative that Kyrie Irving sits games against old teams

Whatever you may think of the polarizing guard’s exits from his last two teams, the narrative about his skipping games against former teams deserves a deeper look.

After slogging through last season watching the Boston Celtics, only to see Kyrie Irving seem to give up on his team and the series in the team’s second-round matchup with the Milwaukee Bucks, you’d be forgiven if you weren’t even a little upset about the now Brooklyn Nets star’s exit.

You’d also be forgiven if you’re ticked off about the Melbourne native’s unfulfilled promise to return to Boston, made ahead of that historic stinker of an NBA season.

It’s quite reasonable to be annoyed with the capricious star’s tendency to word-vomit non-answers in interviews, and to seemingly throw teammates under the bus without taking on a commensurate degree of responsibility.

But, and I say this as a person who relates to several of the points made above, this narrative that Irving is blowing off games to avoid his former teams needs to die.

It indeed looks suspect at first glance, given he’s only played in Cleveland once since leaving the Cavaliers after forcing his way out of that franchise, and perhaps in the past, on one or maybe even several occasions, the perennially banged-up floor general sat when he could have played.

Stranger things have happened.

But if you review Irving’s games over the last few seasons, you’ll notice some other relevant facts. In that first season with Boston, the Celtics only played the Cavs at home once in the regular season and Irving suited up for it.

While he was absent for their postseason clashes, he was recovering from surgery.

Hard to blame a guy for that.

The season after, Uncle Drew was again unavailable for both of the team’s games in Quicken Loans Arena (as it was known before this season) but let’s take a closer look.

The six games before Irving missed the first of the pair, he sat three; for the second missed contest, he’d just come off one of his worst games against the San Antonio Spurs, missing a game against Brooklyn just two games later.

This season, the narrative the Australian takes games against former teams off got so loud it was practically on a P.A. system, with former Celtics center Kendrick Perkins — now an ESPN analyst — openly claiming Kyrie planned to miss matches against Boston several games in advance.

Let’s take a deeper look at that suggestion.

Irving has been out since the middle of November, with the official diagnosis of a shoulder impingement limiting hs ability to play effectively.

The last three games the Irving managed to suit up for were losses, including a drubbing by the Phoenix Suns in which the All-NBA point guard was a -31 on the night.

He has missed six games since — including one against the Cavs at home, to be fair — as well as one, possibly two games against Boston, the sooner coming Wednesday at TD Garden.

Without the context, it’s understandable (maybe even cathartic), to transmute any of the several legitimate reasons to be irked with the difficult floor general. He may indeed be a problem for some — or maybe even all — teams because of his personality and style of play.

But he’s not orchestrating multiple-game absences out of concern for getting booed, or for what his former teams might think.

Such a perspective doesn’t really line up with a player who has been fearless — perhaps to a fault — in many high-stakes moments, nor does it line up with what we’re hearing from teammates about his role in last season’s troubles.

Add in the fact that the NBA has been cracking down on teams resting players without legitimate reason and the narrative ought to look as paper thin as it is.

Keep in mind, the league can levy up to $100,000 dollar fines for sitting players when they don’t have a good reason. Though bruised egos may indeed hurt, they don’t rise to the bar of a worthy excuse to be listed on the injury report, if Irving’s ego was ever the issue in the first place.

As ESPN’s Zach Lowe recently related, the league issued an internal memo just days before Irving began missing games to clarify who qualified for rest and under what circumstances out of concern of how Kawhi Leonard’s comparatively frequent games off might be being (read: were) perceived.

As Lowe noted, “[t]he resting policy prohibits teams from sitting healthy players in “high-profile” nationally televised games,” and if a return to Boston broadcast on national television (in this case, ESPN) doesn’t qualify for this policy, I’m not sure what does.

If the Duke product has indeed been faking or at least fluffing his upper-body issues, it’s cost his own team three home games and maybe a fourth or more going forward.

This brings us to another important point brought up by Lowe on resting players, which, to avoid those fines, would require “teams rest players at home absent some ‘unusual circumstances,’ the idea being that home fans get many chances to see their teams’ stars.”

To date, at least as many away games will have been missed due to the shoulder injury.

Irving’s team might be willing to bend the rules for a night to keep their sole (mostly) healthy star happy but the Nets aren’t sitting him for eight or more such games, risking lower gate receipts and fines, to brazenly tank for a draft pick that will almost certainly convey anyway (while the team’s 2020 pick is controlled by the Atlanta Hawks, it’s also lottery-protected).

Byron Spruell, the NBA’s president of league operations, made clear to Lowe the league has powerful investigatory capabilities in such a scenario, as their broadcast partners will be very displeased with the resulting drop in viewership such absences can cause.

Teams must provide the league with documentary evidence of any ailment which would require a player to rest on such a high-profile game and “should include official reports from examinations by trainers and team doctors, medical imaging and other documents, should the league request them”, a process independently confirmed to ESPN by a team medical staffer.

It might not be the catharsis we want to have for being jilted by a player who’d soured on his franchise in ways not unlike much of the fanbase soured on him.

While it’s without dispute that Irving failed as a leader and good teammate to most during his time in Boston, we don’t need to invent reasons to look back on that era (or him) with dissatisfaction, or even disgust.

That team was, by all accounts, destined for greatness — until it wasn’t.

Even his former teammates refuse to cast the blame solely at Kyrie’s feet, meaning we need to choose whether to believe their very intimate perspective on the topic as a bad take.

Or, perhaps, to take a second look at exactly what it is making us believe the Duke product would so consistently fake injury for so many games and years when facts point to other causes.

This is not an attempt to change how you feel about the mercurial guard and his exit.

It’s merely a call for us to put a little more thought into making such implausible claims.