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Boston might not be the mecca of basketball, but it sure feels like it with the NBA finals underway. If the Finals didn't have enough storylines going around, here's one more: the hate for Mavericks guard Kyrie Irving.
"People are nuts. People are just nuts, like they're sick people," laughed Trevor Smith as he talked about the fandom in his hometown of Boston.
But the kind of hate being spewed at Kyrie is on another level.
On Thursday, some fans came to to TD Garden carrying a blow-up doll with a face cut-out of Kyrie Irving on it. The fans then engaged in some "less-than-classy" antics involving the doll.
"He came here and got his money. He talked the good talk and he got up out of here," said Elijah Chism, who doesn't condone all those antics, but says the hate is deserved.
"There's two different sides to it: the player and the person," said Trevor Smith of CardVault, a hobby shop with multiple locations where they buy, sell, and trade cards. "Every time he got the ball, the crowd gave him a fat boo."
Boston is a city steeped in tradition, but clearly, also rooted in revenge. What Boston fans may not realize is there will be an equal and opposite reaction to Porzingis coming back to Dallas.
"When you're on the opposite side of us -- we bleed green over here," said Chism.
What people don't realize is people also love to hate Boston. So, that might have something to do with it. Dallas Cowboys fans can sure relate to that.
You can add Kyrie Irving to a long list of players that Boston fans simply don't like. A list that includes Bill Lambier, Alex Hernandez, Lebron James, Roger Goodell, and the list goes on and on.