Kyrie Irving, martyr?
That’s exactly how he described himself on the latest edition of “The ETCs” podcast, while explaining to hose Eddie Gonzalez how there was really no plan in place for how Irving could be a part-time player for the Nets during the period where he was unable to play in home games.
“I had the opportunity to play away games still, but there was no plan in place, there was no vision of how it was going to work for our team. And I think that really impacted not just me, but a lot of people. Just had to sit in that hot seat for a little bit and deal with it. The life of a martyr, bro,” Kyrie said.
As Gonzalez even said, it doesn’t seem like Kyrie is going to be off the hot seat anytime soon given his mercurial ways, and Irving says “I’m okay with that.”
“I’ve said so many things in my life, whether it be in public or in private conversations, that could be controversial, or they can make someone think a certain way about me,” Irving said. “I really don’t pay attention to that as much now. But I’ve just been able to learn and grow in this space to be able to learn hey, I can articulate how I feel about certain issues, but some things I’ve got to keep close to my chest, because not everybody’s gonna understand.”
He feels that’s exactly the case when he comes to his vaccination stance, as more people were focused on how it affected the Brooklyn Nets than Irving himself.
“Not everybody understood my stance this year of being unvaccinated or remaining unvaccinated. I was asked in all different types of ways how I felt and whether or not I was going to waver, did I feel like I was letting the world down or letting the Nets fans down, letting my teammates down,” he said. “Yeah, part of that letdown feeling definitely seeped in, because it completely caught me off guard. I didn’t expect to come into the season with all of this being put on my plate.”
Nor was Irving a fan of what he felt was an ultimatum he was forced into based on NYC mandates.
“It was like an ultimatum given to me. It’s either you work and get vaccinated, just like this ultimatum was given to other people, or you sit at home and now we get to talk s–t about your decision and you personally and we make all these judgments,” Irving said. “I had to deal with both ends of the spectrum. So I sat right in the middle and I knew I was doing the right thing for me. And I had to stay rooted in that decision.”
Eventually, the Nets, who initially benched Kyrie completely, allowed him to play in road games (outside of MSG, of course), and he was able to finally play at Barclays Center once a vaccine mandate change was made in late March.
Score one for Kyrie’s will, and perhaps one for those he was fighting for.
“I’m just happy for those that can stand firm and what they believe in and still be able to make a living,” Irving said. “When things come up in our society where they impact people, people’s decisions based on real life circumstances, like people have kids, people have families. And I just feel like it got confusing for a lot of us, it got spun like you said in so many different ways. But really what I was standing on was, hey, there’s a whole community of us that have been labeled as the unvaccinated, as the conspiracy theorists, whatever we’ve been labeled as about who we are as people. But I was just saying, I am human, you’re human. You have the right to make your own decision. I respect that. And I pray that you respect me in the same way. But when you’re playing in an entertainment game, and you’re playing kind of a bigger game yourself, it has rules.”
Irving ended up playing 29 regular-season games, and all four games in the first-round sweep the Nets suffered at the hands of the Celtics.
Follow Lou DiPietro on Twitter: @LouDiPietroWFAN
