The Celtics want us to move on from last season, but can we?

No one has a better view of or sacrificed more in last season’s Celtics debacle than the players themselves, who are asking us to let it go. But can we?

The 2018-19 Boston Celtics were supposed to be world-beaters.

The talent was there. They added two All-Stars back to the active roster after going all the way to the precipice of the NBA Finals. They had depth and assets for a midseason pivot.

Almost everything went wrong, and you’ve heard the tale before. Probably, too many times.

Kyrie Irving was a big part of it. Maybe, the biggest. There were a lot of them, mostly boiling down to competing — and ultimately — incompatible interests.

The fans suffered, slogging through a season of dashed hopes and agonizing basketball to watch. It was the worst.

And if the fans thought they had it bad, imagine being on the team. No one knows the struggle they went through like they do, a year of fruitless practices, lost sleep, missed time with family and friends — for what? To be at the center of one of the most depressing storylines in recent league history?

No one asked for that. At some point we have to accept that a lot of things went wrong, and while it’s convenient to blame Irving, it’s also not fair despite what we know about him quitting on the team.

What the Duke product did was not good for the team, and feels like a betrayal to the fans. Some of us see an arrogant jerk when we see the Instagram screed he wrote in response to the toxic stew of media coverage in part driving the probably-deserved crowd response to a game he was not even at.

Some of us see someone battling demons.

While we can and maybe even should be happy those battles will no longer affect the Celtics, continuing to pick at the scab from that particular figurative wound is not doing anyone any favors, at least in the media.

We want catharsis. We want to assign blame. To an actual human being who by all accounts was not the only problem causing the failed season, including, importantly, those who ought to know better than anyone, his teammates.

Fine. Boo him. Forever if we need to, whatever gets us through the day.

The NBA is, at its essence, a league about entertainment.

One that generates deep attachments to people who need an outlet for their frustrations, and want release from their quotidian lives, because life can be painful. Jobs are stressful, personal loss is never far off. We deserve a respite from that stress, the pain of loss, however it manifests.

What about the guys making that possible for us?

People, even entertainers, athletes, and celebrities get to screw up, though not without consequence. But at what point does being a public figure merit dehumanizing treatment by the media simply for sucking at your job?

The costs which come with having access to such a platform are high, and some people truly are not good at the negative side of the coin while relishing the positive, and Kyrie, being such a person, has more often than not made his situation worse as a result.

Circling back to his teammates, we know Irving was a major force behind last season’s ills. They acknowledge this. They also made it clear a long time ago he wasn’t the sole problem, framing his issues as serious, but one of many such serious issues.

As did head coach Brad Stevens. As did team president Danny Ainge, both of whom also took responsibility, as they should.

Will we, as fans and media?

This is not to say criticism and expectations aren’t part of the overall NBA entertainment experience. But we can also treat the people making the product with a baseline of respect we ought to give to all humans, even the ones doing things we don’t enjoy.

That doesn’t seem to be the case with how the media (this author included) handled a lot of last season’s failure, and it’s spilling into a new season, without Irving, and is starting to affect a promising new team and roster behind an equally promising start.

They are asking us, politely, to stop — and I propose we listen.

No one knows better than they do. No one worked harder to make the Celtics work, or has a better insight.

And as Marcus Smart recently noted (via Yahoo Sports’ Jack Baer), it’s insulting to all the work they are doing now, with All-NBA guard Kemba Walker and a retooled roster almost from top to bottom.

“I mean, there is no hard feelings,” said Smart, who embraced his former teammate after the loss at Barclays Center on Friday afternoon.

“I didn’t hug Kyrie to get on TV. That’s two guys that are trying to make a living for their families being professional athletes. That’s my brother, regardless of what he did. He works hard.”

Note the language used by the Texan. He specifically chose to frame it as two people trying to do something we all do — make a living, with all its implied peaks and valleys. Sometimes, we’ve all done things we regret in those valleys. Things that have not helped and may have even harmed those who depend on us.

Marcus Smart and his teammates are not asking to like Kyrie Irving. They are not asking us to forgive him — they understand how sports work. It is literally their job to.

They are asking us to limit our angst to booing him, on the court, and not endlessly spilling ink trying to play armchair psychologist or character detective, and enjoy the sport, particularly how well this team is doing.

Kemba, on the outside looking in in terms of last season, related:

“It’s nothing to really talk about, you know? I know there’s been some stuff between the fans and him. Hopefully that can be over. We need to just move past it at this point. It’s over. He’s here in Brooklyn, and I’m here now in Boston.”

The Flower Mound native himself added,

“[E]very one of these guys have put in the work and we continue to put in the work and we are here and still competing and yet everybody, including the Boston fans, want to talk about Kyrie. Let’s talk about the Boston Celtics.”

Let’s, indeed.