Four games into his suspension, it remains unclear whether Kyrie Irving will be welcomed back by the Nets, who declared him “unfit to be associated” with the team after failing to “unequivocally” distance himself from antisemitic views expressed in a documentary he promoted on social media. The controversy surrounding Irving has already cost him endorsements—most notably his relationship with Nike—while clouding his NBA future beyond this season.
While most would agree Irving’s erratic behavior warranted at least some measure of accountability, many in the mainstream media—Stephen A. Smith and Jay Williams among them—found his discipline to be excessive, particularly the conditions Irving must meet before he’s reinstated including mandatory sensitivity training and a face-to-face meeting with Nets ownership. Regardless of that argument’s merits, Matt Sullivan of Bleacher Report and Rolling Stone says Irving is lucky to have a job, claiming owner Joe Tsai strongly considered cutting him, only relenting because he worried it would make him a martyr.
“I was told that the Tsais watched this entirely vile documentary on their couch two weekends ago and thought about cutting Kyrie,” said Sullivan, author of Can’t Knock the Hustle, a best-seller chronicling the Nets’ turbulent 2020 season played under “bubble” conditions due to the COVID pandemic. “This is even though the lying GM of the Nets, Sean Marks, said last week the team never considered it. But I was told that the Tsais realized that they’d be making a martyr out of a stubborn fool. So maybe those conditions to return are a way to kind of be able to release him without Kyrie taking the money and the martyrdom with him.”
Though Irving was profuse in the apology he posted to Instagram after the Nets announced his suspension, Sullivan questions his sincerity, recalling a time when the 30-year-old declined to wear a t-shirt displaying an anti-hate message after a vicious attack on a local rabbi.
“When I was reporting my book a couple seasons ago, there was a mass stabbing at a Hasidic rabbi’s house perpetrated by a man who essentially believed the same hate that’s in this documentary,” said Sullivan during his appearance Wednesday on The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz. “The ADL [Anti-Defamation League] worked with the Nets and NBA to arrange for them to wear these pregame warmup t-shirts that read, ‘No Place for Hate.’ I looked at Kyrie’s locker that night before and after the game and he left his no ‘Place for Hate’ t-shirt on the back of his chair.”
Between the Irving debacle, Steve Nash’s abrupt firing and backlash from their abandoned pursuit of Ime Udoka, the Nets have endured more drama than any team in recent memory this season, and it’s only November 10th. Irving conducting himself as a model citizen would go a long way toward quieting the noise, though the chaos-craving point guard may not be able to help himself.
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