As Nets’ Irving pointed out, the media are just pawns

Brooklyn Nets star Kyrie Irving utteredone of the more perceptive statements any athlete made in 2020 when the NBA fined him — and his team — $25,000 for refusing to speak with the media.

Irving wrote on Instagram in December that he hoped the fine money would go to “marginalized communities in need” before adding: “I do not talk to Pawns. My attention is worth more.”

Irving eventually clarified his comment, saying he was speaking broadly about the “mistreatment of certain artists” in the media.

“We go through the rigorous season, we do everything we’re asked to do and we want to perform in a secure and protected space,” he said.

There has never been a more secure and protected space than the one currently inhabited by professional athletes during the COVID-19 pandemic, when all interviews are conducted on Zoom and no one outside his or her designated “tier” comes within several hundred feet of them.

The NBA bubble might not be airtight while traveling across the country, but no playerswill be contracting the coronavirus from a reporter on a laptop.

Nevertheless, Irving was right on the money when referring to us as pawns, the least valuable and most dispensable piece on the chessboard.

We’re all mere pawns in the 2021 sports world. Team owners, commissioners and network presidents are the kings; the team presidents, general managers and powerconference athletic directors are the queens; the head coaches and managers are the rooks; and the players are the knights or bishops.

A few of us pawns who work for national media outlets might have higher profiles, and some even make as much or more money than the executives, coaches and managers.

But we all reside at the bottom rung of the ladder in the sports world, so why anyone bothers talking to us is anyone’s guess. Nothing good ever comes from it, as Irving learned in 2017 as a member of the Cleveland Cavaliers when he discussed on a podcast his theory that the Earth is flat.

Asked if he was serious, Irving replied that he was: “I think about it from just a, not even a scientific way, but the way I travel and how I get around and also the tons and tons of research that supports that theory.”

The pawns quickly pounced on Irving, portraying him as kooky. Someone even asked NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, who like Irving attended Duke, about the wacky theory.

“Personally, I believe the world is round,” Silver replied.

Irving is a graceful and intelligent athlete and fun to watch, but I’ve never been able to separate him from the flat-earth theory, even if he later apologized to “all the science teachers” of the world.

As pawns, many of us are programmed to seek controversial angles. When I covered the White Sox in the 1990s, shortstop Ozzie Guillen once told me I should be working for the New York Post, which I took as the ultimate compliment.

Where would sports be without its controversies? After the Sox re-signed Adam Eaton, who previously was involved in a clubhouse tussle with teammate Todd Frazier, a reporter asked Eaton why the old narrative from his first stint with the Sox was “clouding over” him.

“I think the narrative is clouding over me because the media continues to talk about it,” Eaton said before adding he was “transformed” during his years in Washington.

Soon we’ll be able to watch the transformation in spring training and see how much Eaton has evolved. It’s the least we can do.

But at least Eaton was willing to speak with the pawns. Like Irving and Greta Garbo, some people just want to be left alone.

Last summer, in my role as then-president of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America, I was asked to intervene in a standoff between the Detroit Tigers and the pawns who covered the team. Star first baseman Miguel Cabrera declined to speak with the media after the season restarted but had approved an interview with the team’s social media department for its Youtube channel.

This struck many as a double standard, so I contacted the team on behalf of the writers and asked if the Tigers somehow could convince Cabrera to agree to a teleconference with reporters.

“During these unprecedented times, we continue to take a proactive approach in providing consistent access to our manager, players, coaches and club personnel,” a Tigers spokesman replied via email. “Please know we will revisit with Miguel to ask him for a specific local media-only session.”

Near the end of the season, Cabrera finally agreed to answer questions submitted in advance, which were read and filmed by a Tigers representative in the dugout. The team created a nine-minute video of Cabrera answering questions and shared it with reporters. Everyone was happy, relatively speaking.

Maybe that’s the future of sports writing: The athlete has time to hear the questions in advance and come up with answers, ignoring the ones he or she doesn’t like. The team edits out any comments that might cause the slightest bit of controversy and disperses the video to every media outlet at the same time. Finally, the readers get to consume the same generic stories on a daily basis.

The athletes are thus able to perform in a “secure and protected space,” just as Irving envisioned.

As we head into the second year of closed clubhouses and Zoom-only interviews, the outlook for all the pawns covering the sports world looks rather bleak, which also is also bad news for those whose appetite for sports consumption goes beyond watching the games.

Reading about their favorite players and teams helps generate interest and keeps fans coming back for more. But if only a chosen few are made available to speak and the superstars are allowed to mute themselves, fans’ interest eventually might wane.

While pondering these challenging issues Thursday night, I sat down and turned on the Nets-sixers game on TNT. Unfortunately, Irving wasn’t playing, and Nets coach Steve Nash said he hadn’t heard from him and didn’t know why he was absent.

TNT later showed a graphic of a tweet from a heavy.com reporter who goes by the handle @Scoopb: “Kyrie Irving’s reasoning for not playing in tonight’s game per a close source: ‘I just didn’t want to play.’ ”

If true, that might have been the most honest thing we’ve ever heard from Irving. But Nash threw cold water on the tweet afterward, saying: “I don’t believe that’s the case.”

Not wanting to mistreat the artist, I’ll withhold judgment until Irving’s next post.