Kyrie Irving drags short-handed Celtics to 7th straight win with OT game-winner

For a team that was supposed to have one of the most complete starting lineups in the NBA, the Boston Celtics sure seem to be getting saved by Kyrie Irving an awful lot this year.

Irving was again the hero Monday night in D.C. when a Celtics team missing Al Horford, Jaylen Brown and Gordon Hayward was taken to overtime by the Washington Wizards.

As the final minutes of overtime ticked away, Irving took over. Exchanging shot after shot with the Wizards, usually John Wall, Irving scored the Celtics’ final 12 points of the game to key a 130-125 win, Boston’s seventh straight victory.

Kyrie Irving’s overtime heroics

It wasn’t just that Irving scored his team’s final 12 points, all in the final three minutes of the game. It was how he scored them.

Down by one and with less than 40 seconds left, Irving caught the ball and soon had Wall breathing down his neck. Irving pulled up anyway, and gave the Celtics a two-point lead.

Wall, who seemed to be playing through a mighty amount of pain with an apparent ankle injury suffered earlier in the game, immediately got his revenge with a lay-up to tie it. Irving then got the ball back and did this nonsense to take the final lead:

The Wizards missed a pair of 3-pointers to tie it and the game ended with, who else, Irving at the free throw line to ice the game. Even though the Celtics were playing on the road, he still heard some nice chants.

The numbers of the game’s final minutes backed up the thrills, as the Celtics and Wizards exchanged five game-tying or go-ahead field goals in the final minute of the fourth quarter and overtime, the most in a game this season, per ESPN Stats & Info.

Irving finished with 38 points and seven assists, his fifth 30-point effort in a game this year. The win improved the Celtics to 17-10, good for fifth place in the Eastern Conference.

After some early-season struggles, the streaking Celtics appear to be finally putting it together this season, though they’re currently doing it short-handed and might have to continue doing so with Hayward and Brown ill and Horford expected to miss a few more games with a knee injury, per the AP. Just more work for Irving.

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