Spurs face truth rather than invent an enemy

Every protagonist needs an enemy, and Kyrie Irving is far from the first man to invent his own. He’s rich, successful and a star on what might be one of the best teams in the NBA, but apparently he’s decided the media is out to get him.

This is not a unique viewpoint, nor is it one based in reality, but it works for everybody involved, because Irving gets the incentive of proving imaginary doubters wrong, and his supposed enemy gets some fresh content.

“I do not talk to pawns,” the Brooklyn Nets point guard posted on Instagram this week after being fined $25,000 for skipping interviews, so the pawns just shrugged and wrote about that instead. In depriving reporters of a few boring headlines about the start of training camp, Irving gave them a more compelling one.

Such goes the news cycle, and not every player sees it as a grand conspiracy. For instance, when Spurs guard Dejounte Murray was asked this week about how his team seems to be getting ignored by the big-name talking heads and national TV schedule makers, he responded with a question of his own.

“What did we do,” Murray asked, “for them to be on our side?”

In this way, Murray was making the same point about the Spurs’ lack of profile as Gregg Popovich made about their record last year. In both cases they received exactly what they had coming, and they understand it won’t change before they do some changing themselves first.

Perhaps they’re more evolved than Irving is on that front, or maybe they’re just not as easily motivated by so-called snubs. While Irving tries to prove the pawns wrong, the Spurs might conjure up their enemies from someplace else.

It’s not that one approach is better than the other. Michael Jordan famously fired himself up with fabricated tales of opponent trash talk and exaggerated restaurant slights. College coaches have been known to post fake inflammatory headlines about their own teams on locker room walls.

As a motivational strategy,

blaming the media often works, as long as nobody overthinks it, because the media is no monolith. When players talk about “the media” they’re often referring to one single network, and when they talk about “reporters” they’re often talking about the celebrities paid to say outrageous things on TV.

Yes, the beat writers who cover Irving on a daily basis are technically in the same industry as Skip Bayless, but only about as much as your neighborhood auto mechanic is in the same industry as Elon Musk.

There are plenty of downsides to how the NBA is covered today, when every quote is aggregated over and over again until it’s completely out of context, and rumors often get more traction than the reporting that refutes them.

It’s been said that a lie can get halfway around the world before the truth can put its pants on, and I’m sure Irving would agree with that sentiment, assuming he no longer is sticking with his professed belief that the earth is flat.

I don’t blame him for having days when he’d rather not answer a series of largely unimportant questions. There are plenty of days when the people asking them don’t want to be there, either. But this was the gig he chose, and the size of his salary is due in no small part to the league’s enormous media exposure, so he’ll need to either keep paying the fines or speak with his enemy every now and then.

Communicating can be a headache, but some bad communicators bring the headaches on themselves, and not just in the NBA. For at least a month now, there have been reports about Texas considering the possibility of firing football coach Tom Herman, and athletic director Chris Del Conte has been silent throughout.

Then, on Saturday, he released a statement ostensibly meant to clarify the situation, saying, “I want to reiterate Tom Herman is our coach.”

That was a statement of fact, sure, but it wasn’t exactly newsworthy. Within minutes, Del Conte had to confirm to reporters, including those at the Austin American-Statesman, that Herman will return in 2021.

It shouldn’t have to be this difficult, and that’s why Murray’s answer about disrespect was such a refreshing change.

Given a choice between inventing an enemy or facing the truth, he chose the latter, knowing the truth can be an effective motivator, too.

David Zalubowski / Associated Press When asked about the lack of a national profile, Dejounte Murray chose to tell the truth about the Spurs’ shortcomings. “What did we do,” Murray asked, “for (the media) to be on our side?”