Editor’s note: The following article is an op-ed, and the views expressed are the author’s own. Read more opinions on theGrio.
I am so disappointed by Kyrie Irving. For four seasons, he’s played at the Barclays Center, which is a short walk from my home in Brooklyn, so I got to see him play many times. On the court, he was astounding. The handles, the angles, the speed, the basketball IQ, the body control as he finished near the hoop — he was one of the most thrilling ballplayers I’ve ever seen. It was great to watch him play in New York City, the home of so many streetball legends, because Kyrie played like a streetballer. All that fast dribbling and faking and juking and hesitating and trickery and showmanship made him look like a local streetball player done good. According to the Netflix documentary “Untold: The Rise And Fall of AND1,” he was the apotheosis of the AND1 streetball style.
I also appreciated, at first, how he seemed to have basketball in perspective. In his mind, it was one of the things he does, not the entirety of who he is, and he demanded the world see him that way. Other players seem so focused on basketball that they don’t feel comfortable speaking on issues beyond ball. Not Kyrie. He was a man of ideas, or so it seemed. Then he said he thought the Earth was flat. When the New York Times pressed him for an answer, he remained coy. Kyrie said, “Can you openly admit that you know the Earth is constitutionally round? Like, you know that for sure? Like, I don’t know. I was never trying to convince anyone that the world is flat. I’m not being an advocate for the world being completely flat. No, I don’t know. I really don’t. It’s fun to think about, though.”
It’s…
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