Inside NBA star Kyrie Irving’s Boston ties that date back to his childhood and show ‘how much he loves basketball’

DALLAS Mavericks star Kyrie Irving has discussed his difficult relationship with Boston at length since their NBA Finals matchup with the Boston Celtics was set.

The Mavs and Boston ace have a long past between his failed two-year stint at TD Garden, the infamous logo stomp and his 10-game losing streak against the C’s.

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But Irving’s ties to Beantown actually date back to his signing with the Celtics in 2017, which put him on the path to becoming a local villain — as the eight-time All-Star himself pointed out after Game 2.

“My dad is here, he played at Boston University,” said the 6-foot-2 guard, 32, as he once again addressed how to deal with hostility from the C’s faithful.

“So there has to be respect because if something happens to my family while I’m here, it goes way beyond the game, you know.”

Irving himself spent much of his childhood playing basketball at Boston University, where his father, Drederick, became a local basketball legend.

“It was a pleasure to have him at camp,” Dennis Wolff, 69, the Terriers’ coach at the time, told The US Sun.

“You could see how much he loved basketball.”

Drederick remained close to his alma mater after captaining one of the best teams in Terriers history and rewriting the program’s record books from 1984-88.

During his time at the Charles River campus, he also met his future wife and Kyrie’s mother, Elizabeth, who would die suddenly when the NBA’s presumptive No. 1 overall pick was four.

The former BU guard left the school as the all-time leading scorer with 1,931 points and with the program’s MVP award for playing with Boston in the 1988 NCAA Tournament.

He was inducted into the BU Athletic Hall of Fame in 1995 and is one of seven Terriers to have his number 11 jersey retired.

As Kyrie began to showcase his basketball talent, Drederick took his son to many of his professional and adult games while also trying to place him in places where he could get high-quality training, Wolff said.

As part of that effort, every summer between fourth or fifth and eighth grades, they made the four-hour drive from North Jersey to Boston so Kyrie could attend the Terriers’ basketball camp.

And young Irving quickly caught everyone’s attention with his determination and natural shooting ability, Wolff recalled.

“He didn’t have a growth spurt, he was a smaller guy but incredibly skilled for his age and he never wanted to leave the gym,” the former BU coach said.

“He was someone who seemed to have a bright future.”

Wolff added, “At 10 o’clock, 11 o’clock at night, he was still chasing the kids to their dorm because he was still playing in the gym.”

Irving’s love of basketball stemmed from Drederick, and by several accounts, he really wanted to follow in his father’s footsteps.

In fourth grade, the Mavericks star told his father, “I know without you I wouldn’t be me” and thanked him for teaching him basketball in a touching Father’s Day card.

“I have a long way to go. I want to follow you,” he wrote, for New York’s daily newspaper.

At that point in his life, Kyrie thought he would eventually play for BU, he said. The Boston Globe after the Cleveland Cavaliers drafted him from Duke years later.

The Globe reported that Wolff even offered him a fifth-grade scholarship, but the former Terrier coach said no formal offer was made.

Wolff suggested the story must have “taken on a life of its own” after he told Kyrie at a camp that BU would love to have him as a player in the future, or after predicting he would be recruited by the country’s top programs in a conversation with Drederick some years later.

The fact that young Irving saw himself in a Terriers jersey at some point in his life proves how much he admired his father, the former BU coach said.

“I think it was because his dad loves BU so much… and he had a lot of admiration for his dad,” Wolff said.

Wolff said his memories of the Irvings are overly positive, with Kyrie and Drederick being “two of the nicest people you could ever meet.”

He’s also not surprised that the Mavericks star, playing in his second Finals after winning the championship with the Cavaliers in 2016, could be considered one of the most skilled NBA players of all time.

“He is the product of all the work he has done and his father was an incredible father,” Wolff said. “I’m just a fan.”