KYRIE’S DEFINING MOMENT
Book tells story of how dad’s close call on 9/11 changed him
This excerpt was adapted from Kyrie Irving: Uncle Drew, Little Mountain, and Enigmatic NBA Superstar by Martin Gitlin by permission of the University of Nebraska Press. © 2019 by the Board of Regents of the University of Nebraska. Available wherever books are sold or from the Univ. of Nebraska Press.
The many roles of Drederick Irving often proved hectic and time-consuming. He demanded nothing from anybody. Rather than lament what many would consider overwhelming responsibilities, he embraced them with the help of his four sisters in the understanding that he was not alone. “A lot of women [are single parents] and they get no recognition,” he said. “I don’t want the recognition, to be honest with you. I just handled the responsibility as a father. There were challenges, but I think, overall, Kyrie and [Asia] have a good life, and I just tried to provide to the best of my abilities.”
Basketball remained Drederick’s passion, one that he sought to instill in his son. That was not a difficult task—the boy who could dribble one-handed soon after his first birthday not only associated the sport with his dad’s love and attention but also simply enjoyed playing. As the younger Irving grew older, he learned more about his father’s career. He came to understand the emotional and mental pain Drederick felt at failing to earn a spot in the NBA. That pain planted the seeds of Kyrie’s desire to take his own budding talent to the ultimate level. He was inspired to track his height by scratching notches into his bedroom door and, in fourth grade, writing “I’m going to the NBA” and underlining “Promise” on a wall.
Drederick understood that such a goal would take far more than inspiration. Kyrie had the desire to maximize his talent at that age, but not the confidence on the court in the earliest stages of youth basketball. His father noticed that firsthand as the coach of his son’s fifthgrade travel team. While his teammates reveled in displaying their natural abilities, Kyrie shied away. He watched the others while wandering around the court despite Drederick’s appeals to show off his own gifts. The killer instinct that became a Kyrie trademark had yet to emerge, because it was not his natural state of mind.
“I worked on Wall Street for years, and I can tell you that Kyrie’s not a type A personality,” Drederick said. “Those people are really strongminded. They don’t lack in confidence. They try to dominate conversations. That wasn’t Kyrie.”
It wasn’t only that. The young Kyrie, who years later would be criticized for hogging the ball and failing to involve his teammates offensively, felt compelled to please those that wore the same uniform rather than stuff his own stat line. But he also learned later in life that such a mind-set was the product of a lack of faith in his abilities. “I was afraid to be the best,” he said. “Confidence, confidence, confidence: That’s all my dad preached. He’d always tell me, Kyrie, you could be this. You could be that. My dad had more belief in me than I had in myself.”
Drederick almost lost his chance to instill that confidence in his son when he had a narrow escape from the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Drederick had spent several years working as a financial broker with Cantor Fitzgerald on the 105th floor of the World Trade Center. He then landed another job at Garvan Securities in the same building but, inexplicably, felt a sense of dread about it. Only those who believe in premonitions might claim that Drederick sensed disaster, but he did quit that job after only three weeks for one at Thomson Reuters on Financial Square.
Drederick walked through the World Trade Center building every morning from the train station, and the hustle and bustle of what seemed to be a typical scene was interrupted that fateful morning by a booming noise that sent him reeling. Bedlam ensued. Walls began to collapse as panicked people escaped the suffocating
smoke and began to race for the exits, but stopped out of fear as debris descended from the sky. “I thought the boiler exploded,” Drederick recalled. “The boom was so loud, the force of wind so powerful. There was shattered glass everywhere… . All I could think of was, ‘I’ve got to get to my kids.’ … I stuck my head out and tried to see, but I couldn’t tell what it was. Pieces of the building, pieces of the plane, a lot of paper.”
Drederick made a run for it, using the same elusiveness that came in handy on the basketball court, as he dodged hunks of steel falling from the building that would have added his name to the list of fatalities. He phoned his friends from Cantor Fitzgerald. No answer. He stared at the great skyscraper in flames and realized the horrifying, sickening truth. That was not debris coming off the World Trade Center. Those were bodies choosing forced suicide over burning up. It was