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Kyrie Irving - Soap Opera MegaStar

Updated: Feb 12, 2023


In 2010, LeBron James made "The Decision."


The 2010-2011 season for the Cleveland Cavaliers was a shambles, the largest historic dropoff in performance by any team in NBA history.


In the 2011 Draft, local pundits chirped that the Cavs' fortunes had changed, landing arguably the best 2 players in the NBA Draft in Kyrie Irving with the first pick and Tristan Thompson with the fourth.


In 2017, a newly returned LeBron James teamed with Kyrie Irving and Tristan Thompson to lead the Cavs to the NBA Championship. Then things went to crap again, real, real fast.


-From Beacon of Speech's 2017 article Professional Brats

Kyrie Irving - Age 25

  • Kyrie Irving has been in the NBA Finals for the last 3 years straight with the Cleveland Cavaliers.

  • Kyrie Irving helped the United States win a gold medal in the 2016 Olympics.

  • Kyrie Irving is in the middle of a 5 year, $95 million contract.

  • Kyrie Irving has the Best-Selling Basketball Sneaker on the market right now.

Somehow, someway, Kyrie Irving is unhappy. Now everyone has their own secrets and issues, but Irving's semi-public stance on why he wants to be traded? He doesn't want to be the second option on a championship caliber team. He wants his own team. Lots of professional athletes want to be traded because they're on a losing team, or aren't getting paid, or they're worried about their "brand," but the Kyrie Irving trade demand is a whole different level of this abstract concept of being "the man." Listening to people actually defend Irving, saying that professional athletes live in a different world then the rest of us, is equally maddening.


So unless he's traded to the Golden State Warriors, which isn't going to happen, he's willing to give up a supermax contract with the Cavs, go to a worse team, and potentially damage his brand, just so he can be out of the shadow of LeBron. That is the very definition of the conceited athlete.


-From Beacon of Speech's 2021 article Kyrie Irving Does Not Want to Play Basketball


So back to the present day. Since 2021, did Kyrie find his elusive "happiness" with the Nets?

No.

  • In 2022, Kyrie threw another temper tantrum and demanded to be traded from the Brooklyn Nets.

  • In 2022, just when Joe Tsai had convinced Kyrie to stay in Brookyln, Kyrie Irving was suspended for antisemitic social media posts. Kyrie dragged his feet in apologizing, and then Nike fired him. There was a groundswell for him not to be allowed to play in the NBA anymore, THEN Irving apologized.

  • In 2023, a week before the trade deadline, Kyrie "shocked" the league again and asked to be traded or else he wasn't going to play basketball.




I'm done here, Kendrick Perkins gets the last word.



 





Why in the world would I compare Kyrie Drama to LeBron Drama?



Addendum 1 day later:

Apparently those outside Cleveland want to remind me that LeBron didn't just set the template for former Cavs.











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