Nets show poor form with Irving comments
An intentional and unnecessary fire was started by the Nets this week, creating a storyline that will attract more eyeballs and attention throughout the season.
When you sign Kyrie Irving – and by you, I mean the Brooklyn Nets specifically – you know who you’re getting.
He’s an All-Star point guard who is a tremendous scorer from any spot and angle, an elite ball handler and, through the first six days of the 201920 season, he leads the NBA in scoring at 37.7 points per game.
Irving is also an unusual teammate prone to idiosyncrasies, given to withdrawing, given to making teammates wonder what’s going on. The Nets should have known this, whether it was Irving talking flat-earth silliness or going an entire practice without talking to teammates. They know the stories.
In a deep-dive piece by ESPN about the Nets’ culture and their efforts to reshape the team with the inclusion of close friends and two-time NBA Finals MVP Kevin Durant, Irving and DeAndre Jordan, Irving was depicted as a moody star prone to alienating teammates, coaches and management. The section on Irving was lower in the story and not the main focus.
Nets general manager Sean Marks and other Nets officials were not quoted directly on Irving’s behavior.
Still, it’s unusual that Nets officials shared with ESPN that Irving had an incident when he lapsed into a funk during the team’s trip to China. Jackie MacMullan reported that “Irving’s infamous mood swings, confirmed by his ex-teammates, which followed him from Cleveland to Boston to Brooklyn, are the unspoken concern that makes Nets officials queasy.”
MacMullan also reported that the incident in China left “everyone scratching their heads as to what precipitated it.”
The Nets are four months into their relationship with Irving and one week into the regular season and I’m left scratching my head, trying to understand why Nets officials felt compelled to share that information. There were also details from a team function where Irving declined to follow a photographer’s request to remove his hat.
Are the Nets trying to alienate Irving just a fraction into his four-year contract worth $136.4 million? Why wouldn’t they keep this information private while trying to understand Irving? It was bad form for the Nets to make that public this early. It’s not like Irving has been there two or three seasons and the Nets are tired of him.
Nets coach Kenny Atkinson tried to extinguish the fire following Tuesday’s practice, telling reporters, “That (story) is completely false in my, strictly speaking, observation, my experience with him so far. It’s absolutely not true.
“I say I’m the moody one. I really am. I’m cranky, and I have my ups and downs. If there’s just natural human behavior where guys are up and down, that’s different. From my perspective, I just give Kyrie an A-plus on his consistency and his spirit. It’s been great.”
Irving sometimes perplexed former teammates, including LeBron James who said after Irving left the Cavaliers, “I had a little dialogue with him when I heard that he wanted to be traded, but since then I haven’t. You guys know Kyrie, so, next question.”
We all know his time in Boston the previous two seasons didn’t work out as expected, and Irving took responsibility.
I’ve known Irving since the conclusion of his freshman season at Duke and found that – like all of us – he can be many things: quiet, talkative, standoffish, engaging, insightful, caring, inquisitive. And yes, Irving goes on tangents sometimes that make it easy for people to poke fun, at least on social media, at his quirks.
Durant also defended Irving in the story.
“I look at Kyrie as somebody who is an artist,” Durant told MacMullan. “You have to leave him alone. You know what he’ll bring to the table every night because he cares so much about the game.
“Now, it might not be how other people want him to care about it. He has his way of doing things. I respect who he is and what he does. He has all the intangibles you want in a teammate and a great player. So how he gets to the point to be ready for 7:30 every night, I’m supporting him 100%.”
Following Tuesday’s practice, Jordan also had Irving’s back.
“I think that Kyrie’s a great guy,” Jordan told reporters. “I don’t think that there’s anything negative that I’ve seen that he’s done. And he’s a friend of mine, so if it was, I would tell him.”