Official Welcome Home Kyrie Thread

[MrDollarBills]

A better way would be finding the handful of reporters/journalists that don't make up stuff and only do interviews with them.

edited for language

It's hard to trust anyone who works for ESPN honestly. They tried to start nonsense before the season started last year about Kyrie not wanting to take off his hat for a photo. Is that really newsworthy?

They constantly look to create narratives for clicks and drama.

There's also no way they wouldn't blow a move like that out of proportion. And there will be reporters/journalists that will hold a grudge over not having access to Kyrie and will still write negative things about him.

I think he realizes that no matter what he does, they are going to try to drag him down. So might as well not talk at all.

[MrDollarBills]

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?s=20

[vincecarter4pres]

I don’t love the idea of this, but I completely understand why he’s leaning this way.

Most of the media had tried their hardest to paint him as the new Marbury or Gilbert Arenas because he rubs them the wrong way. Meanwhile they ignore all his charitable contributions, which he doesn’t even attempt to publicize to begin with, they ignore he’s the elected VP of the Player’s Union and all the championing for civil rights he does off the court on top of that.

He’s a little odd, he can come off as a bit of a dick and he can say things in public he should probably keep in house at times, but to me the players and the people seem to like him overall, it’s the media and certain semi-scrubby role players and has-beens who hate him and want to assassinate his character, for the most part.

I mean if you read the tea leaves, it was really Hayward and Terry Rozier as the main culprits in the C’s lockerroom and to an extent Brad Stevens and Jaylen Brown. Kyrie had some share of the blame for sure as well, but when you get past the bullshat media narrative, he was a distant 4th or 5th in line of responsibility there.

Imho, he should give the local Nets beats an opportunity of trust and professionalism though, but we also don’t know what has gone on behind the scenes, maybe that trust has already been broken?

[NyCeEvO]

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[Paradise]

LeBron says he was “hurt” by Kyrie’s comments on KD’s podcast by on being a ‘clutch’ player

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[ecuhus1981]

LeBron says he was “hurt” by Kyrie’s comments on KD’s podcast by on being a ‘clutch’ player

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I think LBJ's comments are fair. Some will call him passive aggressive, I take it as compassionate honesty.

Kyrie has a kind of warped view of the truth, as if it isn't real and authentic unless there's a barb or a sting. This is the source of his verbal diarrhea. I've always been an Irving proponent, even before he came here, before i even knew he grew up watching the Nets like me. But despite the real jewels he drops sometimes, he's more for seeing than hearing IMO.

[MrDollarBills]

I understand Lebron's point, and why he is hurt by those comments. The guy is the #1 player in the world so how could Kyrie overlook that.

At the same time, I think Kyrie is just exuding the kind of confidence in himself that you have to have to be a guy like him who has made clutch baskets at the highest level.

Reading the comments in context, I think Kyrie was more focused on hyping up KD than he was about trying to hurt Lebron. But whatever, if Lebron is mad about it settle it on the court.

[MrDollarBills]

LeBron says he was “hurt” by Kyrie’s comments on KD’s podcast by on being a ‘clutch’ player

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I think LBJ's comments are fair. Some will call him passive aggressive, I take it as compassionate honesty.

Kyrie has a kind of warped view of the truth, as if it isn't real and authentic unless there's a barb or a sting. This is the source of his verbal diarrhea. I've always been an Irving proponent, even before he came here, before i even knew he grew up watching the Nets like me. But despite the real jewels he drops sometimes, he's more for seeing than hearing IMO.

I agree to a point, and I really don't see a reason to defend him over his opinion on this matter, but it sounded like to me he was hyping up KD and just telling people how much confidence he has in himself as a clutch player. We've seen it briefly here, the guy is not afraid of big moments.

I mean let's be real, we've seen Kyrie play on the Cavs. At no point did he ever try to freeze Lebron out or wave him off or anything.

That being said, LeBron has every right to feel the way that he feels, so I see both sides of it.

[MGrand15]

I listened to the podcast and really thought nothing of the comments. LBJ - even as arguably the GOAT - isn't perceived as a shot creator / scorer. I've never seen anyone argue LBJ is a better scorer than KD or Kobe even though his career PPG is higher. Right or wrong, he's just always looked at as a more all around player vs. elite scorer. That's all I took from the comment.

[MrDollarBills]

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aaaand this is why Kyrie is not talking to the media.

[Paradise]

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aaaand this is why Kyrie is not talking to the media.

Exactly.

[3pt_chucker]

I don't agree 100% with what SAS said but he does have a point in terms of Kyrie feigning responsibility for some of the media reaction to stuff he says. Fact is, he has said and done things that deserve/encourage criticism and I feel like he's never properly owned up those moments. (flat earth, cleveland and boston exits, weird quotes, etc)

Of course, now he's an established target of the media and lots of fans and it might be impossible to fix but I do think he shares some of the responsibility in things getting to this point and I get the sense that Kyrie seems unwilling to acknowledge. I think maybe he needs someone in his entourage(family/friends) to have an honest conversation about that... obviously this assuming this hasn't happened at some point.

Kyrie is clearly a unique soul and is not perfect(who is?) but he seems to be a great guy(at least no worse than his peers) and would benefit from some true introspection on past actions and a media relations class haha.

[MrDollarBills]

I don't agree 100% with what SAS said but he does have a point in terms of Kyrie feigning responsibility for some of the media reaction to stuff he says. Fact is, he has said and done things that deserve/encourage criticism and I feel like he's never properly owned up those moments. (flat earth, cleveland and boston exits, weird quotes, etc)

Of course, now he's an established target of the media and lots of fans and it might be impossible to fix but I do think he shares some of the responsibility in things getting to this point and I get the sense that Kyrie seems unwilling to acknowledge. I think maybe he needs someone in his entourage(family/friends) to have an honest conversation about that... obviously this assuming this hasn't happened at some point.

Kyrie is clearly a unique soul and is not perfect(who is?) but he seems to be a great guy(at least no worse than his peers) and would benefit from some true introspection on past actions and a media relations class haha.

The flat earth stuff I kind of chalk up to him probably sitting on youtube with a joint going down the algorithm rabbit hole of conspiracy theories on there at 2am in the morning. I hope after all this time he's actually educated himself with actual science and facts. It's a non issue right now.

What I am scared of however, is if he subscribes to anti vax ideology and openly speaks about it. That is something that he can absolutely NOT do under any circumstances. It's dangerous especially at this point in time. This is another reason why maybe staying quiet could be the best thing for him because flat earth conspiracy rhetoric has a massive intersection with anti vax garbage and while I like Kyrie as a person, because he has shown that he has a lot of goodness in his heart for people, stuff like that can be seriously problematic if he decides to hop on instagram one night and starts going off .

The reason why i believe also that he could be susceptible to that kind of propaganda is because Black Americans, including myself, are very aware of America's history of medical experimentation on Black bodies via the Tuskegee Experiment. That is a huge reason as to why Black folks do not trust the American healthcare system and actually forgo seeking preventative care outside of not having medical insurance. This will be something to keep an eye on in the coming months and I hope that Kyrie, whatever his thoughts may be on the covid19 vaccine, keeps them to himself.

[3pt_chucker]

I don't agree 100% with what SAS said but he does have a point in terms of Kyrie feigning responsibility for some of the media reaction to stuff he says. Fact is, he has said and done things that deserve/encourage criticism and I feel like he's never properly owned up those moments. (flat earth, cleveland and boston exits, weird quotes, etc)

Of course, now he's an established target of the media and lots of fans and it might be impossible to fix but I do think he shares some of the responsibility in things getting to this point and I get the sense that Kyrie seems unwilling to acknowledge. I think maybe he needs someone in his entourage(family/friends) to have an honest conversation about that... obviously this assuming this hasn't happened at some point.

Kyrie is clearly a unique soul and is not perfect(who is?) but he seems to be a great guy(at least no worse than his peers) and would benefit from some true introspection on past actions and a media relations class haha.

The flat earth stuff I kind of chalk up to him probably sitting on youtube with a joint going down the algorithm rabbit hole of conspiracy theories on there at 2am in the morning. I hope after all this time he's actually educated himself with actual science and facts. It's a non issue right now.

What I am scared of however, is if he subscribes to anti vax ideology and openly speaks about it. That is something that he can absolutely NOT do under any circumstances. It's dangerous especially at this point in time. This is another reason why maybe staying quiet could be the best thing for him because flat earth conspiracy rhetoric has a massive intersection with anti vax garbage and while I like Kyrie as a person, because he has shown that he has a lot of goodness in his heart for people, stuff like that can be seriously problematic if he decides to hop on instagram one night and starts going off .

The reason why i believe also that he could be susceptible to that kind of propaganda is because Black Americans, including myself, are very aware of America's history of medical experimentation on Black bodies via the Tuskegee Experiment. That is a huge reason as to why Black folks do not trust the American healthcare system and actually forgo seeking preventative care outside of not having medical insurance. This will be something to keep an eye on in the coming months and I hope that Kyrie, whatever his thoughts may be on the covid19 vaccine, keeps them to himself.

As a Biomedical scientist, this really hits close to home. I too am a tiny bit worried about him being anti-vax for those exact same reasons. He brands himself as a free thinker and people who say that are typically the most frustrating people I have to explain science too. Then you tie in (rightful) distrust the black community has for medicine and science as a whole, it can easily end up there. Also given that the vax will be the fastest developed vaccine in history by quite some margin, I can easily see people cooking up some kind of conspiracy.(there already was even before the vaccine was close to being finished)..

He hasn't said anything like this in the past though, so hopefully **crosses fingers** this does not happen an that maybe KD and co can keep him from that bomb.

[ecuhus1981]

I listened to the podcast and really thought nothing of the comments. LBJ - even as arguably the GOAT - isn't perceived as a shot creator / scorer. I've never seen anyone argue LBJ is a better scorer than KD or Kobe even though his career PPG is higher. Right or wrong, he's just always looked at as a more all around player vs. elite scorer. That's all I took from the comment.

EXACTLY!

There are so many clutch things you can do on a basketball court. Hitting big shots is probably the only category where I would not put LBJ as top 5 in the league. He's very good at it, but not the best. I believe that was the crux of Kyrie's point, and it's completely valid.

HOWEVER, it's naive of Irving not to anticipate the reaction from his comments, and perhaps indicative of his disconnect with common thought processes. His mind just genuinely works differently than 99% of people, that's his gift and his curse.

[ecuhus1981]

The flat earth stuff I kind of chalk up to him probably sitting on youtube with a joint going down the algorithm rabbit hole of conspiracy theories on there at 2am in the morning. I hope after all this time he's actually educated himself with actual science and facts. It's a non issue right now.

What I am scared of however, is if he subscribes to anti vax ideology and openly speaks about it. That is something that he can absolutely NOT do under any circumstances. It's dangerous especially at this point in time. This is another reason why maybe staying quiet could be the best thing for him because flat earth conspiracy rhetoric has a massive intersection with anti vax garbage and while I like Kyrie as a person, because he has shown that he has a lot of goodness in his heart for people, stuff like that can be seriously problematic if he decides to hop on instagram one night and starts going off .

The reason why i believe also that he could be susceptible to that kind of propaganda is because Black Americans, including myself, are very aware of America's history of medical experimentation on Black bodies via the Tuskegee Experiment. That is a huge reason as to why Black folks do not trust the American healthcare system and actually forgo seeking preventative care outside of not having medical insurance. This will be something to keep an eye on in the coming months and I hope that Kyrie, whatever his thoughts may be on the covid19 vaccine, keeps them to himself.

Good Lort, we will all be in a hurt box if he starts popping off some more cultural opinions. He gets the entire team in enough hot water with his basketball sound bytes.

To your point on PoC's not trusting the American medical system, you daaaang right. Black women die under the auspices of health care at like 3x the rate of the general population in the USA. There's a reason when I was growing up, folks used to say that "hospitals are where you go to get sick". But I digress...

[MrDollarBills]

I don't agree 100% with what SAS said but he does have a point in terms of Kyrie feigning responsibility for some of the media reaction to stuff he says. Fact is, he has said and done things that deserve/encourage criticism and I feel like he's never properly owned up those moments. (flat earth, cleveland and boston exits, weird quotes, etc)

Of course, now he's an established target of the media and lots of fans and it might be impossible to fix but I do think he shares some of the responsibility in things getting to this point and I get the sense that Kyrie seems unwilling to acknowledge. I think maybe he needs someone in his entourage(family/friends) to have an honest conversation about that... obviously this assuming this hasn't happened at some point.

Kyrie is clearly a unique soul and is not perfect(who is?) but he seems to be a great guy(at least no worse than his peers) and would benefit from some true introspection on past actions and a media relations class haha.

The flat earth stuff I kind of chalk up to him probably sitting on youtube with a joint going down the algorithm rabbit hole of conspiracy theories on there at 2am in the morning. I hope after all this time he's actually educated himself with actual science and facts. It's a non issue right now.

What I am scared of however, is if he subscribes to anti vax ideology and openly speaks about it. That is something that he can absolutely NOT do under any circumstances. It's dangerous especially at this point in time. This is another reason why maybe staying quiet could be the best thing for him because flat earth conspiracy rhetoric has a massive intersection with anti vax garbage and while I like Kyrie as a person, because he has shown that he has a lot of goodness in his heart for people, stuff like that can be seriously problematic if he decides to hop on instagram one night and starts going off .

The reason why i believe also that he could be susceptible to that kind of propaganda is because Black Americans, including myself, are very aware of America's history of medical experimentation on Black bodies via the Tuskegee Experiment. That is a huge reason as to why Black folks do not trust the American healthcare system and actually forgo seeking preventative care outside of not having medical insurance. This will be something to keep an eye on in the coming months and I hope that Kyrie, whatever his thoughts may be on the covid19 vaccine, keeps them to himself.

As a Biomedical scientist, this really hits close to home. I too am a tiny bit worried about him being anti-vax for those exact same reasons. He brands himself as a free thinker and people who say that are typically the most frustrating people I have to explain science too. Then you tie in (rightful) distrust the black community has for medicine and science as a whole, it can easily end up there. Also given that the vax will be the fastest developed vaccine in history by quite some margin, I can easily see people cooking up some kind of conspiracy.(there already was even before the vaccine was close to being finished)..

He hasn't said anything like this in the past though, so hopefully **crosses fingers** this does not happen an that maybe KD and co can keep him from that bomb.

I didn't know you were a scientist dude. Very cool

Yes, you have every right to worry. It's not just Kyrie though, I am willing to bet that there are more than a few NBA players who may harbor these sentiments. Again, I understand the WHY, and the distrust, but people have to look at the facts.

I'm old enough to have caught the chicken pox when I was a child (80 baby whoo hoo). My sibling is about 10 years younger than me, she and people from her age on down don't even know what the hell that even feels like. Why is that? Vaccines. Measles, Mumps, Rubella...know anyone who has ever had that in this day and age? Neither do I. I know why. I've had to explain this to some folks who are into the whole conspiracy thing that facts and science data outweigh anything some dude randomly posts on YouTube about vaccines. Humanity's improved quality of life and increase in life expectancy has a good bit to do with the fact that we don't deal with a lot of nasty stuff that our collective ancestors did, all because of scientific advancement in medicine.

Even I am a bit wary about the speed of the vaccine for Covid19, because it's unprecedented, but I also started reading up on how organizations and companies who developed the vaccines have received record number of funding from governments to help with the studies and development of it on top of how newer methods that were not available in the past were used to create it. So I personally have high hopes that we (the world) will get past this, but people need to educate themselves, and YouTube and Facebook are not helping right now.

Also, the notion of "free thinking" seems to be a code for "let me spout off opinions that I do not want to be challenged with facts, and I will ignore the facts presented to me because they don't align with what I believe".

"Free thinking" is basically the antithesis of critical thought.

[MrDollarBills]

The flat earth stuff I kind of chalk up to him probably sitting on youtube with a joint going down the algorithm rabbit hole of conspiracy theories on there at 2am in the morning. I hope after all this time he's actually educated himself with actual science and facts. It's a non issue right now.

What I am scared of however, is if he subscribes to anti vax ideology and openly speaks about it. That is something that he can absolutely NOT do under any circumstances. It's dangerous especially at this point in time. This is another reason why maybe staying quiet could be the best thing for him because flat earth conspiracy rhetoric has a massive intersection with anti vax garbage and while I like Kyrie as a person, because he has shown that he has a lot of goodness in his heart for people, stuff like that can be seriously problematic if he decides to hop on instagram one night and starts going off .

The reason why i believe also that he could be susceptible to that kind of propaganda is because Black Americans, including myself, are very aware of America's history of medical experimentation on Black bodies via the Tuskegee Experiment. That is a huge reason as to why Black folks do not trust the American healthcare system and actually forgo seeking preventative care outside of not having medical insurance. This will be something to keep an eye on in the coming months and I hope that Kyrie, whatever his thoughts may be on the covid19 vaccine, keeps them to himself.

Good Lort, we will all be in a hurt box if he starts popping off some more cultural opinions. He gets the entire team in enough hot water with his basketball sound bytes.

To your point on PoC's not trusting the American medical system, you daaaang right. Black women die under the auspices of health care at like 3x the rate of the general population in the USA. There's a reason when I was growing up, folks used to say that "hospitals are where you go to get sick". But I digress...

Black women being utterly betrayed by the American medical system is a huge part of the problem that is fueling the distrust, and that isn't a problem in terms of science, it is a systemic racism problem that comes down to collective attitudes and behaviors of healthcare officials. I have read horror story after horror story of doctors treating Black women differently than other patients, and also having this imbedded ideology that Black women have more tolerance to pain than other women...which is ABSURD. Too many stories about women being turned away or being dismissed when they are feeling pain, only to find out that they were suffering from serious issues that went untreated because the doctor who looked at them was a racist prick.

Read up on Serena Williams, the tennis queen's story of how she almost died during child birth. It was horrific.

Not to derail the thread any further but yeah. I understand 100% if Kyrie feels the way he does. That doesn't mean that he needs to be spouting off right now.

The inevitability of the NBA getting access to several hundreds of doses of the vaccine is a foregone conclusion. NBA players will be getting vaccine access before any of us regular folk. This is when I have a feeling some really bad opinions are going to be made public and I pray that Kyrie can just keep his distance.

[Paradise]

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Rant:

As a black man who’s very aware of how media is controlled and anyone who doesn’t know who owns the mainstream media needs to research. It is VERY refreshing to me to see Kyrie stand up on a real cause.

It’s hilarious seeing how many irrelevant writers, wannabe freemason sports journalists, so upset that ONE guy refuses to answer questions they WANT to twist. Like we haven’t seen it with Marshawn Lynch? Russell Westbrook?

I am absolutely disgusted at how he’s being portrayed because he doesn’t want to talk to people who NEVER admit to twisting words for clicks?

I NEVER ONCE saw the same energy for Jason Kidd beating his wife repeatedly or all those DUIs, never saw the same energy for Iverson throwing his wife out naked, never saw the same energy for anyone involved with the Malice in the Palace.

I don’t even see the same energy for Malik Beasley who just got PAID by Minnesota after being ARRESTED for guns, drugs and then, caught cheating on his wife with Scottie Pippen’s loose wife and in Denver, got into a fist fight with an NFL player over the same wife he cheated on.

Kyrie decided not to answer questions and now he’s toxic and now suddenly, he’s the next Marbury? LOL

Social media is becoming a disease in sports and creating too many opinions that do not belong.

[MGrand15]

Not really a fan of him using the word 'pawns'. I don't like the way Kyrie is portrayed in the media or all the hate that's thrown his way - but I would say ALL of that comes from the national media. Our local media has treated him very well. I haven't seen any instance of our guys twisting his words or writing sensational articles for clickbait. Everything becomes a problem when ESPN or other outlets pick it up.

Just think it's disrespectful to guys like Kristian Winfield, Brian Lewis, Greg Logan, even ND. Those guys haven't done anything wrong. It's cool to not want to talk to them but don't publicly bash them like that.