Walker may not be as talented as Irving is—the numbers and two-year age difference back that up—but the drop-off between the two is pretty damn small, especially when you consider the kind of role that the Celtics wanted Kyrie to play last season. Rather than being forced into a position where he has to be the best player on the team on every single play, he’ll likely be asked to play within Brad Stevens’s collaborative offensive system that will lessen his work load. Sure, he’ll still occasionally be called upon when the team needs to get an important bucket in late-game scenarios, but, for the first time in his career, Walker will have a solid collection of talent around him to help him out during those moments.

Most importantly, however, Walker doesn’t bring the galaxy-brain kind of thinking that led Kyrie to essentially ghost his last two former teams, and cause chemistry problems by trying to be a father figure to players who are five years younger than him at most. Boston will just have a level-headed top-tier point guard that might make the Celtics in their current state better than Kyrie ever could at best, and, at worst, keep at the same level where they were last year.