Michael Kidd-Gilchrist had a chance to watch his old high school teammate interact with the Garden crowd on Feb. 26, when the Memphis forward and the Grizzlies made their annual visit.

What he witnessed was something along the lines of best-case scenario, from what Kidd-Gilchrist could tell about the early connection between Irving and his new bloc of fans.

“Man, it’s amazing here. Me as a friend, I’m happy for him here,” Kidd-Gilchrist said.

Irving and Kidd-Gilchrist played together on the high school powerhouse St. Patrick in Elizabeth, N.J.

“He was always a guy that stood out. His demeanor and stuff like that. He always wanted to be great,” said Kidd-Gilchrist, who believes Irving’s career will be further elevated by his Celtics incarnation.

“Always follow Ky, him and his story, his play,” he said. “Now he’s that player, that person he always wanted to be. In the same sense, in his mind, he ain’t there yet. He just wants greatness from himself and I can expect that.”

As the basketball fans of Boston and Cleveland discovered last summer, Irving’s demand for a trade may have been unusual, but it was absolutely within the point guard’s character.

Asked about the confidence in someone who asks to be traded away from an NBA Finals entrant, Kidd-Gilchrist said, “Outside, looking in, yeah. But for him it was another challenge. He’s embraced everything here — this city, his teammates, I can see it from afar.

“We never talk about it, but I was always happy for him, whether he stayed or whether he left,” he said of Irving’s demand. “But he’s embracing everything, the wins and losses, he’s embracing the team, embracing the coaching staff. It’s cool for him.”

This week’s C’s timeline

Tonight, vs. Indiana, 7:30 — No team has taken advantage of the shifting dynamics in the Eastern Conference more than the Pacers, who are fighting down the stretch for a No. 4, and possibly as high as a No. 3, playoff seed. Pacers guard Victor Oladipo buried the Celtics during Indiana’s Feb. 9 win at the Garden.

Wednesday, vs. Washington, 8 p.m. — The Wizards are being chased by the Pacers for the fourth playoff spot, and they’re a team that understandably hasn’t been the same since John Wall went down. He originally was expected to return from a knee procedure in mid- to late-March. This may be a tad optimistic.

Friday, at Orlando, 7 p.m. — The flailing Magic are in a chase with Atlanta for cellar occupancy in the conference.

C’S STAR FINALLY ABLE TO JUST ‘HOOP AND BE GREAT’

Will there be an even better version of Irving someday?

Kidd-Gilchrist shrugged before saying, “I don’t know. I’m not going to judge. But off the court, yeah — he’s older, he’s wiser. He’s mature now.”

Irving has talked of developing and having to overcome “bad habits” during his early years in Cleveland.

In a recent chat with the Herald, Irving went back through growing up in an NBA environment that, prior to the return of LeBron James, was unstable on every level.

“There’s an entertainment aspect of NBA basketball that I didn’t know I was signing up for,” he said. “You give up a sense of your privacy, a sense of what you were able to do prior to being a professional. The game was going to be the game and I was going to figure that out. There were a lot of changes that I had to adjust to — different GMs, different coaches, which happens over the course of an NBA career.”

Most young stars, though, don’t experience the same managerial turnover witnessed in Cleveland by Irving, who played for four coaches in his six seasons with the Cavaliers.

Starting with his debut as the 2012 Rookie of the Year, Irving enjoyed tremendous freedom with the ball, for better and worse.

Thus, those bad habits.

“At first I was pretty stubborn, because I wanted to figure it out on my own,” Irving said. “When you follow the lineage of great players that have come before you, they’ve reached out to other great players and asked for help. It’s just figuring it out — how to get out of the young man’s mindset of being in this game of basketball and trying to perfect it on your own, and all at once. Attitude, there’s so many bad habits you have to break out of, especially when you’re in a losing situation at times. It forces you to act a certain way. You have to get rid of those habits. In order to be in a winning environment you have to have a winning attitude. I know that sounds cliche, but that’s true.

“You start figuring it out that there’s so much more to the game. You’re afforded opportunities to meet great players, which I took full advantage of. When you get to this level and you realize there’s a different motivation, and different approach that people have, whether coaches or players, to adjust to, and I just wanted to hoop and be great.”