Kyrie Irving's first foray into unrestricted free agency could very well result in him playing in one of the league's two marquee media markets. After all, the six-time All-Star has been rumored of late to be interesting in signing with both the New York Knicks and Los Angeles Lakers this summer.

As Irving tells it, though, fame and notoriety will have nothing to do with where he ends up in free agency. In fact, the additional attention that comes with playing in one of the league's glamor markets could possibly prove a detriment to the Knicks and Lakers' chances of signing him this summer.

“I didn’t really come into this game to be cameras in my face, be famous, be a celebrity, whatever embodies that,” Irving said on Monday, per Tom Westerholm of MassLive.com “It’s a little hard for me. I wanted those things when I was younger, but now…I just want to play basketball at a very high level.”

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Irving has been under greater media scrutiny than normal recently for walking back his preseason commitment to re-sign with the Boston Celtics come July, remarks that came in the wake of New York creating enough cap space to sign two max-level free agents. He'd previously drawn the ire of Celtics fans this season for publicly questioning the motivations of his team's young players, and league followers at large in the past for his insistence that the earth is flat.

Boston, losers in four of their last five games, is now two and-a-half games behind the Philadelphia 76ers for fourth place in the Eastern Conference. The Celtics are 6-0 in the six games they've played without Irving since late January.