Kemba Walker isn’t his predecessor. There are pros and cons to that.
The pro that’s been discussed most has been Walker’s approach with the young guys and his general ability as a leader. Makes sense given the chaos that ensued under Kyrie Irving’s watch last year.
With Jayson Tatum, Jaylen Brown and Marcus Smart getting the chance to play with Walker on Team USA, everyone got a taste of how Walker would work with the other three.
Now, Smart has made clear he got along well with Irving, so it’s hard to imagine he won’t do the same with Walker, too — just based on the surface-level stuff we’ve seen from the new Celtics point guard, with regard to his personality.
The younger guys are the larger concern. Particularly Brown, since it seemed he and Irving were at odds last year, certainly more so than Tatum and Irving were.
Based on Brian Windhorst’s comments on ESPN’s “Brian Windhorst and The Hoop Collective,” Walker has won over Brown and the rest of Team Shamrock.
“They love Kemba,” Windhorst said. “They love him. And it’s a double-edged thing. Jaylen Brown refused to talk about the past. He was like, ‘That was then, this is now. We are artists painting a new painting.’ . . . ‘It’s a new year, it’s a new canvas,’ is essentially what he said.
“They’re saying how much they love Kemba, but it’s also kind of a way (of) saying, you know, ‘We really didn’t like Kyrie.”
Of course, it has to be about how they didn’t like Irving. That’s what it always comes back to, right?