To some the Brooklyn Nets guard is an entitled conspiracy theorist. To others he is a superstar millionaire with a conscience
Midway through the feature film Uncle Drew, the titular character confronts the coach who lured him and his over-the-hill teammates out of retirement and into a basketball tournament at New York City’s famed Rucker Park. Feeling conned into cooperating for the love of the game while a $100,000 winner’s prize went purposefully unmentioned, Uncle Drew flips his totally convincing wig. “You just don’t get it, do you, Young Blood,” he says. “This game, the love I got for it – it’s all sacred to me.” Looking back, it was a hell of an acting job by Kyrie Irving.
It has been two weeks since the 28-year-old All-Star guard was last seen in uniform for the Brooklyn Nets. That’s counting the Barclays Center dates against Orlando last Saturday and against Milwaukee on Monday, which saw former league MVP James Harden back up his axis-tilting trade out of Houston with 66 points and 26 boards in a pair of Nets wins. “Personal reasons” was the line Irving offered up as cover for his extended leave, which ended on Tuesday. And in these quote-unquote unprecedented times, only a monster would have thought to challenge him on it. Or at least that was until a maskless Irving was caught on video celebrating his sister’s birthday at a packed New Jersey nightclub last week.
