Nets need to express their freedom of choice, trade away Irving
NEW YORK — These are all self-inflicted wounds for Kyrie Irving, every one, except what would be the smallest one: Getting the shot.
This is the one about someone as intelligent as Irving, as socially aware, sabotaging himself and his team and his chance to win another NBA championship, which would mean winning one with LeBron James and Kevin Durant in the same lifetime. Irving said on Instagram the other day that this is all about freedom of choice. It is. A smart guy is making one that is not just bad, but monumentally dumb.
It is why the Nets should look into getting rid of him sooner or later, seeing if there is possibly a taker for him, with all of his baggage, old and new.
Even if the Nets only got a player one-third as good as Irving in return, 33% of something is better for the Nets and their championship ambitions than 100% of nothing. Which is what they’re going to get from Irving this season unless, and until, he wises up on vaccines.
Irving, at his best, ranks with the best smaller guards to ever play the game. He is that good, that gifted at basketball, as much as he continues to go out of his way to make people forget that. He is still only 29 and the dream he and Durant chased to Brooklyn is still very much within his reach, if he will just get out of his own way.
This isn’t merely about the millions of dollars he will be walking away from if he doesn’t play basketball this season. That’s also about freedom of choice. He’s obviously made enough screw-you money in his NBA career that he can make the choice not to follow the rules of his league and the mandates of his city and effectively quit.
He is, at least for the time being, choosing to waste his basketball life for being this off-balanced on vaccination, another American in the year 2021 who doesn’t believe science, who doesn’t want to be told what to do, who is not only putting himself at risk but those around him. There is nothing heroic about this. His stance on social justice, that was.
He is on the right side of social justice, has been from the start. He is on the wrong side of this, and will stay there if the Nets hold on to him. But if he truly is dug in on this, if he won’t get the shot then the Nets ought to trade him if they can find a taker.
He says he is doing what he is doing because it “feels good” to him. Well, hooray for Kyrie. But you have to know how Durant feels about this, whatever support he’s thrown Irving’s way in public. It is hardly a secret that Durant is angry as hell. And has a right to be. He came back from his Achilles injury and could have gone anywhere, gone to the Knicks or somebody else. He chose the Nets. He chose Brooklyn. He and Irving were going to do this big, basketball thing together. And now Irving, in a selfish act that he wants to come up noble, he turns his back on Durant and turns his back on his team. What a guy.