What is wrong with Kyrie Irving?
This is quite a good question to be answered nowadays, because Kyrie Irving seems to be the elephant in the room everytime his name is mentioned in a conversation, whether if it’s basketball or life-related. We can understand his mental health issues, and we strongly support him in that matter, without a doubt, but sometimes you just need to be more coherent when you want to make a statement, like Kyrie Irving tried to do on social media after the Boston Celtics – Nets game. Otherwise, you will get all the negative comments and attention from the fans and the people around the league, who are quick to judge in those kind of situations.
The media always waits patiently for the smallest mistake in order to make a storyline out of it, so here we are now, talking about Kyrie Irving’s personal problems instead of talking about his game and his impact on the team, which by the way, is not quite stellar at the moment. He is currently out with a shoulder injury, and because of that, a lot of people are thinking that he set up his injury to not play in the TD Garden. Normally I wouldn’t believe that, not at all, but given Irving’s weird behavior in the past years, everything is possible with him, apparently, and if this is true, Kyrie has, indeed, huge mental problems, but I guess we’ll never know that for a fact. The next game vs the Celtics will be played today in Brooklyn this time, and he is still being ruled out.
Kyrie Irving is averaging 28,5 PPG, 5,4 RPG and 7,2 APG on 44,4% FG%, being ranked the 5th in points-per-game. However, his team record is not as good as expected, and this is what matter most in the bigger picture. The Nets are currently on the 7th spot with a record of 9 wins and 9 losses, so the pressure is rising in New York, because you clearly have to make a better season than the last one, otherwise it will be taken as a failure, given the fact that, once he got there, the expectations of the Brooklyn organization were sky high. In addition to that, voices from New York were saying there are already some problems in the locker room because of his mood swings, and that is a reason of concern for what’s about to come in the future, when Kevin Durant will be cleared to play. It will take some time, as we all know, so until Kevin comes back, he needs to prove to nobody but himself, that he is, indeed, a true leader, because he didn’t show that in Boston either. Look at them now with Kemba Walker running the point… a much better presence in the Eastern Conference than last year. Those things raise big question marks about his leadership.
It is well-known that he is a very good basketball player and a straight-up baller, there’s absolutely no doubt about that, but if you want to be a true leader, as he stated before that he wants to be, it takes more than your basketball skills to be that kind of a man. We’ll see what the future holds for him, but until then, either he needs to delete his social-media apps or he needs to learn to simply ignore what doesn’t suit his vision.
