Dallas Mavericks guard Kyrie Irving made his return to streaming over the weekend while he recovers from a torn ACL, and used the opportunity to weigh in on the never-ending tensions between past and current NBA athletes.
After a conversation on his Twitch channel about how one-on-one basketball competitions helped him learn more about himself and his creativity as a person and an athlete, Irving took a moment to go deep on his experience with how the culture around the NBA is divisive and limiting.
In a long monologue four hours into his stream, Irving took aim at NBA media, in particular former athletes, and the way in which race and money pit players against one another and create an incorrect image of the league and its players.
“Let’s stop allowing people to come into our culture, our spiritual game and tell us what’s right and what’s wrong. And I’m talking to some of the former players, too. They have lost their way,” Irving said.
Irving said former athletes reject efforts from this generation to form relationships because of what Irving sees as jealousy and misunderstanding.
“There are some former players who just be talking chat s***. You don’t even be talking about anything. All you do is hate on the younger players,” Irving said.
“And then you got young players looking up to these older players and we see them as, I don’t want to call them our idols, but we looked up to them. We valued their journeys. We respected their journeys. We wanted to get close to them. And then when you see somebody that you respect like that and admire, go on TV and talk about your journey as if it’s just some, ‘oh yeah, this just happens to you all the time, get over it because you make a bunch of money.’ I’m so sick of that f***ing excuse, bro. That you’re not allowed to feel because you make a lot of money in the NBA and you get paid.”
As Irving’s comments continued, he got more personal. Irving believes most NBA fans and commentators know very little about the inner workings of the league, so he wants to set the record straight. Part of that work will be streaming more as he rehabs from the knee injury, not long after he spent a long evening with Kai Cenat on-stream during the Twitch star’s Subathon.
Irving thinks it is unfair and harmful that NBA commentators are so negative. Some of that may be from pocket-watching and jealousy from the older generation, but Irving intimated that the dynamic of white analysts covering a predominantly Black sport also creates unnecessary friction in how the league is talked about day to day.
“You got people that are talking s*** about the culture and get paid from it. I’m good, bro. That whole relationship is done,” Irving said. “When we describe it in Black and white terms like that, it has a way of separating us. Like, ‘oh my god, he’s nice for a white boy.'”
In part because of those racial stereotypes and the perceptions around NBA stars, Irving gave insight into the way he has been made to feel “dumb” from those around him as a pro.
Of course, Irving has long pushed back on those ideas. He was one of the primary forces against the league competing in the “Bubble” in 2020, citing the public health crisis and racial reckoning. He fought with the league and local government over mandated vaccination in 2020 and 2021. His commentary on race and religion led him to share a link to an antisemitic film in 2022, which led to a suspension.
“Don’t even get me started on what people say about athletes all the time, especially basketball players. They think we’re dumb as s***,” Irving said. “They think we don’t have any real backbone when it comes to beliefs, or standing for people that need us. They feel like we don’t have any backbone. You have politicians that call us out all the time because they’re like, ‘just shut up and dribble, just do this, just do that.’ OK, that’s your criticism. But how am I supposed to make a dent in the world if I’m always being suppressed?”
If Irving indeed commits to streaming consistently, it will provide an interesting platform for one of the most outspoken star athletes in the U.S. to make his beliefs known on the state of the NBA and the world.
Already, Irving is taking aim at former athletes in media and the overall power brokers in the NBA as he continues to disrupt the culture of the sport in his own way.