Kyrie Irving’s first media appearance since he left the Boston Celtics this summer to join the Brooklyn Nets went roughly as expected, which is to say it was entirely unpredictable and appropriately enigmatic.

For some reason, contradictions seem to follow Irving around.

At Brooklyn’s media day on Friday, Irving was thoughtful, loquacious and opaque -- he gave long answers which wound themselves in circles but never seemed to find their way back to the point (there will almost certainly be times this season when Brooklyn media find him considerably less talkative, but never less opaque).

He praised the Nets’ organization and said his grandfather’s passing -- and his own subsequent struggle with depression -- made him rethink his commitment to the Celtics.

“It felt incredible in terms of the energy (the Celtics) were building,” Irving said of his commitment. “It was something I couldn’t really explain at the time ... and then two weeks later, things got really rocky for me.”

On the other hand, Irving said he had “no type of affiliation with Boston” before he left Cleveland -- a statement which ran contrary to the months of pro-Boston propaganda he released via commercials and leaks following the trade.

He also trotted out one of his favorite punching bags: The Celtics’ young guys.

“Having so much youth and exuberance and goals set personally, I think that some of the actual knowledge that needed to be had in terms of being a championship team takes more than just two years,” Irving said. “It takes more than just an environment that you feel comfortable in.”

Of course, he’s right. It can take more than two years to build a championship team, which is an odd thing to point out since Irving gave the Celtics exactly two years before departing.

But that’s a battle that has been fought already, and the Celtics lost it. Moreover, Celtics coaches and front-office members have been very intentional in how they talk about Irving. Brad Stevens avoided pinning any more blame on Irving than he puts on himself or the rest of the team, and Danny Ainge consistently maintained his stance this summer that he likes Kyrie.

“The last point guard we had, it didn’t end like we wanted this year, but it certainly wasn’t his fault,” Ainge said at Kemba Walker’s introductory press conference in July. “He was just one piece of the whole team.”

So once again, the entire Kyrie Irving situation is very complicated. He wasn’t perfect by any means, but the Celtics intentionally avoid placing blame at his feet. That’s telling.

Irving suffered from depression after the death of his grandfather. Grief manifests itself in a myriad of ways, and it’s not a stretch to see how grief affected Irving’s thinking and sent him back home to Brooklyn.

“Throughout the year, it started becoming more and more clear that my relationship with my home life has way higher precedence than the organization or anyone, and I barely got a chance to talk to my grandfather before he passed, from playing basketball,” Irving said. “So you tell me if you would want to go to work every single day knowing that you just lost somebody close to you doing a job every single day.”

Meanwhile, his desire to avoid free agency questions throughout last year was understandable, and he certainly wasn’t the only person in the Celtics’ orbit to get swept up in preseason enthusiasm. He was ALWAYS within his rights to leave, and after the 2018-19 season, the Celtics’ situation wasn’t exactly inviting (if Irving hadn’t told everyone he planned to re-sign, would there have been any question he was leaving after the Milwaukee series?). He also took responsibility for his failures as a leader, saying he didn’t give Celtics teammates “everything I could.”

On the other hand, Irving never should have committed to re-signing before the season even if he felt sure at the time, for reasons that became abundantly clear over the ensuing months. He shouldn’t have called out young players over and over as they tried to walk around the enormous footprint he left on the organization. And while Ainge and Stevens may protest, Irving deserves an enormous amount of blame for Boston’s loss to Milwaukee. After months of hubris, Irving shot 30.1 percent from the field over Boston’s final four games (all losses), and he inexplicably decided he should guard Giannis Antetokounmpo repeatedly, which predictably proved disastrous.

All of those things can be true at once, which is what makes the situation so complicated. Irving’s grief changed his mind about where he wanted to play at a time when he had every right to make whatever decision he wanted, but no one -- including Irving -- can deny how messy last season got, and the role he played in the messiness.

As is often the case, Marcus Smart may have had the most cogent look at the situation, speaking to reporters in his exit interviews following the season.

“Not one of us on this team knows what Kyrie has been through,” Smart said at the time. “He was forced into a situation where it was business over friendships. Where he had to come into a situation knowing that there’s a group of guys that had something going before (he came) here, he didn’t want to disrupt that. That says a lot.

“We took him in with full arms. We tried to understand him. We never really understood. We’re not in his shoes.”

Much of the same can be said of Celtics fans, as well as those of us in the media who are around the team all the time. We tried to understand Kyrie. We never really understood. We’re not in his shoes.