BOSTON -- In the wake of a pair of highly publicized team discussions and a comfortable, amiable 119-103 victory over the Charlotte Hornets, the Boston Celtics' locker room was particularly cheery -- a group seemingly lifted by a common goal and newly refocused.

On Friday, Kyrie Irving was the last player to leave what had been a contentious locker room, and he had no interest in talking about the discussion -- informing reporters that “It’s none of your business, honestly.”

Two days and one big win later, Irving still didn’t directly divulge any details. But he seemed to drop a few extra hints. Asked about the unique group (which he has commented on multiple times), Irving said the team needs to accept its roles, even if the roles aren’t exactly what each individual player would want.

“But getting past those things, the ego-centric things, this is a chance of a lifetime for us,” Irving said. “And I think that, in order to achieve what we want to, we have to be closer as a team and really understand that when someone takes a shot, it’s our shot, we feel good about it, now we get back on defense and we prepare the right way and we do the right things for one another and not just for ourselves. So, I’m enjoying this. Every day is a new challenge. I’m just so open to what these guys have to offer and what we can accomplish by the end of the year, because talking to you guys is boring. It’s really boring, honestly, talking about game-to-game, what we can change, what we look like and stuff like that. But the in-game for us is the big picture, understanding what the goal is and how we accomplish it. It’s an everyday thing.”

Irving can be excused for finding the media boring, since the same questions have dogged the team all year. Losses are natural. A good stretch followed by a really bad one is less so, and the Celtics have repeated the same pattern over and over. With Horford and Morris back in the lineup and a more natural order back in place, the Celtics looked like contenders again for a night.

So the questions were roughly the same. Did the meetings help? And how do Irving and the veterans lead a young group with championship aspirations?

Irving’s answer to the latter question lasted a little over two minutes, but it was telling.

“Having social media, having a lot of just pressures outside, and as well as bringing them into the locker room, I think that it’s fairly tough,” Irving said. “Because where our league is now, a lot of young guys have found a lot of success. And honestly, watching the veterans that have come before me, they haven’t really done anything to be these so-called ‘greatest next things coming.’ You know what I mean? This league has seen a lot of greatness -- like, a lot of greatness. And I think sometimes (people) can be caught up in the in the now, like of what it looks like, and guys averaging this amount of points, or doing this. Whoever’s playing at the end of the year -- like, you can have the All-NBA, you can have the MVP, you can have all of it, as long as our team is playing at the end of the year. Thinking about that six months prior, when you’re coming into a season in September, is hard to really fathom. It’s hard to grasp. And I think some of our young guys have never been on a championship kind of journey.”

Only Irving and Aron Baynes have won championship rings in the Celtics' locker room, and Irving’s clout is well-earned -- no one else in the locker room can say they had his role on a title team, and only a very small handful of players in NBA history have hit shots as big as his Game 7 dagger against the Golden State Warriors in 2016.

Irving has talked repeatedly this season about developing the type of mentality necessary to win a title, but on Sunday, his comments were perhaps more pointed than at any other time this season toward the Celtics' young players.

“You have to really open yourself up to communicating with these guys, and them communicating with you, and telling them how they feel about their roles, and us just being open to fixing things and helping one another rather than just allowing outside influences to dictate how you feel about your role," Irving said. “Everybody else from the outside: ‘You’re supposed to be this young, great player. You’re supposed to be averaging this.’ But no one here is in the locker room except for us. So you guys don’t know what every day is like for us. A young guy coming in like Terry (Rozier), playing behind me. And (Jaylen Brown) and (Jayson Tatum). And Gordon (Hayward) going to the bench, and what that does mentally. And Gordon coming off an injury. Like, they talk about it, but you never know what they’re really feeling. So I’m just glad that we can have that open dialogue now where we can just figure it out and know what the big picture is.”

The big picture seems to matter a great deal to Irving. The rest of the veterans seem to be on the same page, and the team meeting may have helped the team refocus on its priorities.

“It’s very important,” Marcus Morris said, smiling. “I wish we would have had (the meeting) not after the game so we wouldn’t have had a whole bunch of questions about it. Could have just kept it to ourselves, but it happens. It’s very important for a team that’s trying to accomplish something as we are.”

On how annoying the media’s questions can be, certainly, Morris and Irving are aligned.