Cleveland Cavaliers: Making sense of Kyrie Irving's comments on ESPN

The narrative surrounding Kyrie Irving’s comments about the Cleveland Cavaliers and his trade request is inaccurate.

Predictably, NBA fans and the media need to satiate their thirst for drama. Just ask Boston Celtics point guard Kyrie Irving, who was traded by the Cleveland Cavaliers after six seasons. Six seasons of assassin-like scoring that helped the Cavs win their first NBA championship in franchise history. Six seasons of an alpha dog mindset that Irving corralled when Cleveland’s prodigal son, LeBron James, returned to the team.

Irving appeared on ESPN’s First Take on Monday morning and was questioned about his motives for leaving Cleveland and his relationship with the organization.

Immediately afterward my text messages and Twitter feed were buzzing with discontent.

Apparently, Irving’s demeanor, philosophical verbiage and self-confidence was a turn-off for many fans. To me, Irving said or did nothing wrong or out of the ordinary. To be frank, fans are the ones who are in the wrong.

Especially those fans in Cleveland who act like a woman scorned because he left.

Here are a few excerpts from Irving’s interview, with quotes provided by ESPN’s Brian Windhorst.

"Q: What went into the decision to request a trade?KI: I was just very patient in my approach. Understanding what the magnitude of the moment was. I wasn’t going to allow anything else to get in the way of our team’s success. I was just very diligent, very professional in terms of this whole entire process. And the request came at a time I deemed right for me."

With all the hoopla about Irving’s interview, this is never quoted. Irving makes it clear he always intended to leave but didn’t know when. He also makes it known that his desire to play elsewhere didn’t affect his performance. In fact, his focus was on delivering another championship to Cleveland.

"Q: What went into the decision to request the trade?KI: I just wanted to be in an environment where I felt I could be taught every single day and have that demand from my coaching staff and have that demand from a franchise that would propel me to exceed my potential and see how far I can go."

Can we be honest here? If head coach Tyronn Lue is still green behind the ears as a coach, whose most infamous moment as a player is bring stepped over by Iverson and allowed Irving to remain the same player he was by defending his scoring style and saying his passing won’t be what makes the team better, how does he help Irving grow as a player?

Even in terms of defense, there’s no barking from Lue when Irving plays matador on the perimeter and lets his matchup run by him time and time again. Lue remains silent and stoic. James said it himself, players want to be coached.

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"Q: Follow up about wanting to separate from James.KI: I wanted to change the environment does not mean that it stops the pursuit in terms of what I want to accomplish as a player.It doesn’t mean that I didn’t want to play with LeBron anymore. It means I wanted to leave the environment that I was in currently and felt like as energy draining as it was and how it would take me for a loop in a roller-coaster ride and all the false reality that was created by a lot of different outlets, it all came crashing down at one point after we lost the last Finals."

Here we have another unpopular truth. Yes, Irving wanted to leave but it wasn’t because of James. It was because of media-created storylines that he found emotionally draining. As we all know, not everything you see on the internet is true. The same goes for the media. The drama and falsifications are certainly driven by the league’s obsession with James and his pursuit of championship, so by leaving the Cavs he’d end up in an environment more conducive to his happiness.

"Q: Something personal going on with LeBron?KI: Why does it continually have to be about one player? Do you realize I play with 13 other guys on the team?"

That statement should be self-explanatory.

There are also those who were appalled that Irving thought he could win a ring without James as if James is the only player to ever when a ring.

It’s amazing to think that after Irving outplayed 2-time MVP Stephen Curry throughout the 2016 NBA Finals and at the end of 2017 NBA Finals, that there are those who doubt his ability to excel in a championship series.

Sure enough, due to the NBA fan’s current obsession with Spurs-ian ball-movement, Irving’s style of play doesn’t earn him as many fans as he would have had in the 1990s and 2000s, when the league was dominated by incredible iso players with an alpha dog mentality: players like Allen Iverson and Kobe Bryant. Still, throughout his time in the league he’s been constantly underrated. In truth, Irving isn’t a great defender and he’s certainly not a pass-first point guard but he is head and shoulders above the rest of the class as a scorer.

I’d venture to say he is the best scoring point guard in the league when you consider the tools he has at his disposal: deep range, a silky touch on his jump shots, an endless array of around-the-basket finishes and the ball-handling ability of someone who belonged on the And 1 Mixtape Tour.

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Ultimately, Irving just wants to grow as a player and be peaceful doing it. What’s wrong with that?

Making sense of Kyrie’s comments on ESPN

By Quenton S. Albertie | Sep 19, 2017

The narrative surrounding Kyrie Irving’s comments about the Cleveland Cavaliers and his trade request is inaccurate.

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