It became abundantly obvious on Friday that Kyrie Irving is, to put it mildly, annoyed by the melodrama surrounding his free agent plans and the questions it begets. The same can be said for his Celtic teammates, who, with Irving, have had enough trouble trying to get their shot together this season.

The situation gained heat as all the side pockets were unpacked with the Anthony Davis trade request luggage, and then the Celtics’ All-Star guard sat courtside at Madison Square Garden Friday morning and did nothing to lower the temperature.

To be clear, we’re not here to tell Kyrie Irving what to do. It’s his life, and he gets to travel it as he wishes. And as I’ve said here before, if sportswriters knew better how to run our own lives, there’s a strong chance we wouldn’t be sportswriters. But is fair — necessary even, in this case — to let you know this is of some concern to the Celtics and examine the effect of comments and actions on the end product, just as one would report that a made shot at the buzzer broke led to a win, or a turnover allowed an opponent to break a tie in the final seconds.

So it is that Irving invited further speculation when, after stating on numerous occasions, both plainly (his statement to fans last October) and through intimation (talking about himself and his Celtic teammates in future seasons), he was questioned, in light of reports he could go elsewhere, whether his feelings had changed.

“Ask me July 1st” are the four words that launched a thousand hot takes. And even if Irving was simply expressing his disgust with a media machine that takes the work of one or more reporters speaking to sources and turns it into hours or programming and countless pages, both printed and online, he has to know how it would be received.

You should know that the Celtics never believed Irving was absolutely certain to return when he opts out of the final year of his contract after this season and seeks a longer and richer deal. The club would never take him for granted like that.

And there became even more room for the Celts to realize this is a fluid situation when the team struggled early under the weight of near unanimous acclaim that it would be the Eastern Conference representative in the NBA Finals.

According to a source close to Irving, he’s shared his frustrations this season with Celtics’ management, but the conversations were said to be in more of a ‘How can we get this right?’ context.

Again, the club had to know all along there was always a chance he could decide in the end to move on, and it had to be thinking that possibility would grow if the Celtics hit some rough seas.

“So obviously things this season haven’t gone as I planned,” Irving said Friday, “and, you know, that’s part of being on a team where you’re still trying to figure things out.”

But management couldn’t have been ecstatic with the full range of his comments that morning, and the question now is what effect it might have on the product going forward. Does what was said in some way hurt the Celtics’ chance to reach the goal Irving laid out, which is to win a championship this year with this team?

While it’s undeniable that outside entities with their own vested interests were the sources raising this Kyrie future doubt at the start, it was bound to be picked up as a loud talking point by print media and the electronic side of the business with even more time/space to fill.

But as much disdain as Irving clearly has for all this yammering (“It’s crazy how stories and things and storylines can seep into a locker room, and, you know, you guys are part of the destruction of locker rooms. And that’s just what it is. This is an entertainment industry. I don’t live for this entertainment.), he has to acknowledge the he opened the door to the locker room on Friday.

And his teammates are well aware of this. Among those spoken to on the record, Marcus Morris gathered the sentiments well, saying of Irving after the win over the Knicks, “He’s a guy that’s very polarizing in the NBA, in the world, so everything he says is going to be… even if it’s not really that serious, it’s going to be taken out of proportion. But like I said, man, he still comes in, he’s a professional, we all love him, and we all want him here.”

It’s just that the people with whom we discussed the matter know things could have gone more smoothly. Irving didn’t even have to say he was definitely, 100 percent, I ain’t kidding, totally going to be signing a long-term contract with the Celtics this summer. If he had merely smiled and said, “That’s my plan,” and gone on to state that he didn’t want to feed into the rumor mill by commenting further, we’d be talking about basketball today — about a Super Bowl Sunday meeting with Paul George, Russell Westbrook and the guys the Celts beat by six points in Oklahoma City back in October.

Irving had already managed to do this once this season when he told a gathering of season ticketholders at a practice, “If you’ll have me back, I plan on re-signing here next year.” Related Articles Hayward recovers well from his 30-minute return

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That earned him more than three months of quiet in regard to his future. He wasn’t under oath or anything, and I know from my schooling back when I planned on being a lawyer (and you got stuck with me instead) that the comment lacked the basic contractual requirements of offer, acceptance and consideration. It was always open to revisitation.

If the Celtics continue to win and improve and grow into a team that can play in June, this will be seen as merely a speed bump, but inside there is concern of how things will go if clouds appear.

Kyrie Irving knows how to maneuver through tight situations, and this one may require more than dribbling.