Story at a glance
- Kyrie Irving returned to Boston two years after leaving the Celtics as a player on an opposing team.
- A fan was escorted out of the arena by police after throwing a water bottle at Irving’s head.
- In remarks to ESPN, Irving criticized fan culture and pointed to “underlying racism.”
On his first visit back to TD Garden after leaving the Boston Celtics for the Brooklyn Nets, Kyrie Irving was reportedly targeted by a fan who threw a water bottle at his head before the fan was kicked out of the arena.
“You can see that people just feel very entitled out here,” Irving, who played for the Celtics from 2017 until 2019, told ESPN. “They paid for their tickets — great, I’m grateful that they’re coming in to watch a great performance. But we’re not at the theater. We’re not throwing tomatoes and other random stuff at the people that are performing.”
Now with the Brooklyn Nets, Irving’s return to Boston was dramatic — also involving a tiff with the Celtics’s Kevin Garnett and Glen Davis over allegedly stomping on the team’s logo on center court — but triumphant for the 29-year-old. The Nets won the game, 141-126, to lead the series 3-1 against the Celtics.
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Before Irving’s return to the arena this weekend, he said he hoped fans would “just keep it strictly basketball.”
“There’s no belligerence or any racism going on; subtle racism,” he said.
Boston fans have been accused of yelling racial slurs before, including at then-Golden State Warriors player DeMarcus Cousins, although the team said they were not able to “verify the use of racially offensive language.”
“You’re seeing a lot of old ways come up,” Irving, a Black Muslim, told ESPN. “It has been that way in history in terms of entertainment, performers and sports for a long period of time and just underlying racism and just treating people like they’re in a human zoo. Throwing stuff at people, saying things. There is a certain point where it gets to be too much.”
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