Kyrie Irving Says He'll Be Ready For Celtics Training Camp
BOSTON (CBS) -- After a long and rigorous recovery, Kyrie Irving says his left knee infection is behind him and he's confident that he'll be ready to hit the floor when Celtics training camp arrives in a few months.
Irving, chatting with reporters Thursday at the Team USA minicamp in Las Vegas, said he's been cleared for basketball activities, though he has yet to play in any 5-on-5 games. His time on the floor has mostly consisted of individual workouts with his strength and conditioning coach, focusing on his skill moves and movement. Irving attended the Team USA practice Thursday and threw passes to Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook and Victor Oladipo after the session while in street clothes.
The Celtics All-Star guard was shut down in April after he underwent surgery to remove a pair of screws from his left patella. The hardware was causing a bacterial infection, and Irving said he's happy they found it when they did because it could have eventually turned into a staph infection.
"I was fighting an infection in a specific place in your body where you can't necessarily reach with your hands. You got to go in there and kind of see what's going on, and what happened for me was, the metal wiring and the screws that I had in there, the infection was on that, so I had to remove that and then be on antibiotics for about two months," he told reporters. "It could have evolved to staph, but good thing we caught it early. I am glad that is done. That was a long, long f---ing two months."
Irving said he's been rehabbing for the last six weeks and has been able to do most of his workouts without much restrictions.
"This is probably one of the first summers in the last seven years where I have actually had time to develop and work on things that I want to improve on," he said. "I have been playing USA every summer or I was hurt one summer or we are coming off a championship. It has been a grind, and it kind of caught up with me last season."
Irving is eager to once again hit the floor with his Celtics teammates, who made it all the way to Game 7 of the Eastern Conference finals without his services (or those of Gordon Hayward, who is also set to return to action once training camp arrives). Boston will head into the season the favorite to make it to the finals out of the Eastern Conference, but Irving said finding their chemistry early will be key to the team's success.
"Nothing but excited to lead that group. I mean, we haven't started [yet, so] everyone is zero-zero right now. ... The most important thing right now is finding our cohesion," Irving said. "So finding that [cohesion] is going to be a process, which I am looking forward to doing with Danny [Ainge], Brad [Stevens], everybody."
Irving played 60 games for the Celtics in his first season in Boston, averaging a team-high 24.4 points per game off 49 percent shooting.
