New Book Details How Kevin Durant, Kyrie Irving Decided To Team Up On Eve Of Warriors-Celtics Game On January 25th 2019, Kyrie Irving had Kevin Durant over for dinner at his home outside Boston on the eve of a nationally televised game between he Boston Celtics and Golden State Warriors, according to accounts described in Matt Sullivan's new book 'Can't Knock The Hustle.'. Irving and Durant were a few months away from becoming free agents. For Irving, it would be his first time experiencing free agency. A few months prior, Irving publicly said he intended to re-sign with the Celtics but the death of his grandfather a few weeks later sent him into a period of depression. Durant had won two straight titles with the Warriors, but he didn't think the team would get any better if Steve Kerr didn't hold Draymond Green accountable for his outbursts and was also occasionally irked by the attention Stephen Curry received from the media and fans. Durant ate a vegan burger for the first time that night and a superteam began to take shape with Irving. Irving and Durant saw the Nets as a franchise with two max salary slots, a flexible general manager and a few existing supporting pieces already in place. "And from that point," Irving said, "we took the power back and put it in our hands." Durant and Irving eventually committed to the Nets and also made sure they also signed DeAndre Jordan. "I don’t think there was a moment when Ky took it over from us," a Nets executive involved in his recruitment told Sullivan. "We all understood — basically everybody who is following the NBA understands — he’s a personality. But we were at a point where we thought the organization is strong enough, and the culture is strong enough, to survive or absorb different personalities. Whether that assumption is true remains to be seen."
The Standing Rock Sioux reservation straddles the state line between North and South Dakota, in an area of the United States where there are hills, dust and not much else. Getting there is no easy trip, even for a man of means like Kyrie Irving. The closest airport is in Bismarck, about an hour north, and there are no street lights to illuminate the road in either direction. One turn off the main highway, and the road becomes gravel and dirt. The hub of the reservation is a town called Fort Yates, which sits on a small island in the river. On the side of the road heading into town is reservation housing, dilapidated properties with graffiti on the walls, and dogs running loose between the yards. Next to a field, on the drive in, is a boulder sitting on top of a slab of concrete, with a bronze plaque marking the spot where the great chief Sitting Bull was buried. The Prairie Knights Casino and Resort, which backs up to the Missouri River and sits atop an embankment overlooking the lonely highway below, just north of Fort Yates, belongs to the Standing Rock tribe, and a blinding glare shines off the facade when the sun sets over the Dakota plains. Walking out of the casino at dusk requires sunglasses, or a good-sized forearm to block the rays. Kyrie Irving had an important dinner there in August. Irving, 29, is the star basketball player whose refusal to comply with New York City’s mandate requiring a COVID-19 vaccine has already cost him millions of dollars, and, if something doesn’t change, a potential championship for his team. But he is also the one who said the Earth was “flat.” Who won the divorce from LeBron James he demanded. Who roiled the Celtics with his behavior. Who’s ghosted the Nets, more than once. He embraces conspiracy theories, and changes religions, and goes on strike from talking to reporters. He takes to Instagram to try to explain. So I flew to Bismarck and drove to Fort Yates in December as part of a months-long effort to try to understand him. Irving’s mother, Elizabeth, was from the White Mountain family on the reservation. She was put up for adoption days after being born and never returned to the reservation. Elizabeth Irving was 29, and her little boy just 4, when she passed away. His search to be closer to the mom he’s missed so much brought him to Standing Rock, even though it wasn’t her home. He’s trying to build a connection with his Native American relatives. Her relatives. Her. On his latest trip to Standing Rock, Irving went to the reservation to formally enroll in the tribe. He submitted an application. To be enrolled, he must have at least 25 percent Native American heritage, which he does. One of Irving’s cousins on the reservation, Char White Mountain, 71, did not know Irving was in town that day until she heard it on local radio. The two had met twice and communicated occasionally via text messages. She wanted to see him, so she raced from a doctor’s appointment to where Irving was being honored. He was happy to see the woman he calls “Auntie Char.” They embraced and agreed to go to dinner at the casino by the river. The sunshine outside the casino may be blinding, but inside, the lights are low. There is a single, circular room, stocked with slot machines, a few gaming tables and cigarette smokers carrying plastic cups of coins from machine to machine. There is a bar and a few TVs off to the side, where customers can grab a Coors Light for $1 and a cheeseburger for $5. The fancier dining area is in a separate room away from the gambling, where linen covers the tables. As Char tells it, when she and Irving sat down at one of the tables, Kyrie invited her to “get whatever you want.” She ordered steak, she said, “because I hardly ever get to eat it.” A true luxury for an elderly woman on a fixed income, living on the reservation. Kyrie, who no longer eats meat, ordered fish. At the time Char recounted her story to me, Irving had yet to play a single game for the Nets this season. And during dinner with Irving, Char said, he told her that basketball was “more or less just a job” to him. Then, as he showed her pictures of his children, he paused and asked her, “Auntie, who can I trust here? Who can I trust?” This seems to be a question Irving has been asking for years. Which team can he trust? Which teammates? Which friends? Which scientific facts? I began covering Irving at the start of the 2014-15 season. We were cordial, with what I always felt was a strong professional relationship. I did not approach him unless I had something important to discuss, and he almost always obliged. Most who’ve covered Irving do not say the same. I’ve watched him dazzle crowds with his ankle-breaking dribbles and his stunning finishes at the rim. I saw him sink one of the greatest shots in NBA history to beat the Warriors in Game 7 of the 2016 Finals. He’s an Olympic gold medalist, a Nike ambassador and a very wealthy man. But with each passing year, I’ve witnessed him do and say things to pull at the threads of his career, as though he wants it to unspool. “I am worried about him because I can’t find the upside for him in his actions,” a league executive told me, one of the more than two dozen people I spoke to for this story. Many of those I spoke to who work in the NBA shared a similar sentiment. I want to ask Kyrie about all of it. I’ve emailed his father, knocked on the door to his old house in New Jersey, where his aunt and cousin (on his father’s side) now live, texted with his best friends, and, of course, sat with Auntie Char. One or several or all of them let him know what I was asking about. I even drove from my house in Cleveland, to Indianapolis, for his first game this season, hoping for just a few minutes. But, through multiple spokespersons working for him or for the Nets, the answer was “no.” There may be no single explanation for why Irving does what he does. There are a thousand puzzle pieces, dumped onto the floor, and picking up any two or three doesn’t give the full picture. He is bright and ornery and a contrarian. He plays basketball like it’s an art, but he’s not as interested in it as he used to be. The crushing loss of his mother, when he was so young, left several, indelible marks, including a decade-long search for people he can trust, and an unbreakable compassionate streak. But when it comes to getting the vaccine – which health experts say protects the elderly and the vulnerable, because it limits the virus’ spread – he won’t do it. Who is Kyrie Irving, as he nears his 30th birthday in March? Perhaps even he is looking for that answer. William Merklinger was shoveling snow in the early evening about 20 years ago, when he felt and heard a loud thump on his back. A snowball exploded on his jacket. He turned around to see who’d thrown it. A small boy, grinning ear to ear, was waving back at him. His family had just moved into the yellow house, two doors up the hill from the Merkinglers, on Ridgeview Avenue in West Orange, N.J. The boy was Kyrie, age 9. “I remember picking him up and throwing him in the snow, and then, we just had so much fun,” recalled Merklinger, standing on the same porch stoop where Irving used to knock on Merklinger’s door. “That was just the type of kid he was. A little ornery. Always smiling. Always a very respectful kid. Always competitive. I have such fond memories of him.” As I drove the suburbs surrounding Newark, visiting the places where Irving grew up, the people I talked to who remember him all said he was happy. When Kyrie was in the eighth grade, he began working with local basketball trainer Sandy Pyonin, who quickly became like a mentor to Irving. They worked on Irving’s game, multiple times a week, at the local Jewish center. Pyonin would take Irving out for food on their way home, and even give Kyrie and his girlfriend a ride to school parties when they needed one. “He loved those Slim Jims, so he would always be asking to get one of those,” Pyonin said. “He was just a regular kid, very bright. He could speak about any subject, anything at any time. He always laughed. He was always smiling.” Irving was a “B” student, solid in math and in English, a promising writer and artist, a nice boy who never got into trouble, his teachers and school principals said. “The thing I vividly remember is, he always looked you in the eye,” recalled David Flocco, principal at Montclair Kimberley, one of the two institutions Irving attended for high school. “He was kind.” Between Irving’s junior and senior years, he was on two summer basketball teams. He played for Pyonin on the Roadrunners, a famous AAU team, and St. Patrick, his other high school. Both entered the same tournament at Disney World, and Irving wanted to pull double duty. Pyonin denied Irving’s request, because Kyrie was playing on a sore hip. He asked Irving to choose, so Kyrie picked his high school team. St. Patrick’s draw for the tournament was two of the best teams in the country, with games against them on the same day. Irving scored 90 points in the two games, winning both. But he didn’t forget his friends on the Roadrunners, either. Pyonin said Irving attended every one of their games and sat on the bench. At every timeout, or during every substitution, he got out of his chair to hand teammates water, like he was the student manager. “He was somebody who knew who he was,” Isaiah Lewis, a teammate at St. Pat’s, told me. The stories were similar in the early days after Irving left West Orange.
His lone season at Duke was cut short due to a scary toe injury that cost him 26 games. While Irving was out, he sat on the end of the bench next to Casey Peters, a former student manager who had earned a scholarship by Irving’s freshman season. They made 3-point goggles to celebrate every deep shot from a teammate. Irving often visited Peters’ apartment to hang out. He’d walk in, talking on his cell phone to his father, Drederick, caring not if Peters and other friends listened to the conversation, nor if his dad could hear the boys in his background. “We were laughing all the time,” Peters told me. “He’s like, dancing all around, walking around in the training room after his (physical therapy). “He was super happy at Duke.” When Kyrie arrived in Cleveland as a 19-year-old, a newly minted millionaire and the No. 1 pick of the 2011 NBA Draft, he was so happy that he applied endearing nicknames to not only his teammates and coaches but also members of the Cavs’ support staff. He bounded through hallways and parking garages, addressing everyone he saw with the name he’d come up with for them. Irving starred immediately for the Cavaliers, though not every day was a peach. Back then, the things Irving might have done to raise an eyebrow, like bristling at head coaches or feuding with teammate Dion Waiters, or even immersing himself in Cleveland’s nightlife (don’t laugh, it exists), were chalked up to signs of immaturity in a young man, instead of red flags. There were more than a few missed shootarounds for “flu-like” symptoms, but he almost never missed the game that night. At no point did the behavior he showed in his early days in Cleveland give the Cavs any pause before offering him a $94 million contract extension, which he eagerly agreed to. He signed it one day before LeBron James’ stunning announcement that he was coming home to Cleveland. And that’s when Irving’s career began to turn. So many of the — what’s the word? — “incidents” involving Irving have taken place out in the open, for the world to see. There is no need to rehash them all. But the strangest thing he did as a Cavalier, something you surely recall, was to say ‘this is not even a conspiracy theory — the Earth is flat.” Revisiting that moment can be an insightful exercise in trying to understand him. Irving first made the “flat Earth” comment on a podcast that dropped during All-Star weekend in 2017. When I first pressed him on his comment, the morning after it dropped, he suggested that when he had something important to say, he felt ignored. And when he said something silly, well, look at the attention it garnered. As I considered his response, and what he may have been referring to, my mind went directly to the following example. On Dec. 8, 2014, the Cavaliers played a game in Brooklyn. That night in the New York borough, Prince William and Kate Middleton were courtside. So were Jay-Z and Beyonce. And outside the arena, a large protest in response to a grand jury choosing not to indict the New York police officer involved in the death of Eric Garner, an unarmed Black man. Irving, a socially conscious 22-year old, wanted to do something to join the protest. He found a hook-up for a T-shirt that read, “I Can’t Breathe” — what Garner said as the policeman choked him — and wore it during pregame warm-ups. LeBron got a hold of one and wore it too. Headlines around the world trumpeted LeBron for wearing the shirt. Irving’s participation was almost an afterthought, as far as the media was concerned. It wasn’t just about T-shirts. Or the pulpit LeBron clearly had — about social justice, race relations or even the 2016 presidential election — that Irving did not. When LeBron returned to Cleveland, the Cavs hired his trainer, his security and his personal assistant. Irving couldn’t get the same treatment for his associates, and it bothered him. But not just him. According to a previous report by The Athletic, an incident between Drederick and one of the people close to LeBron whom the Cavs hired turned ugly when Irving’s father refused to shake hands with him. LeBron eventually asked Kyrie what happened, and Irving told him Drederick believed they shouldn’t be “fraternizing with the enemy.” “I think a lot of that was pushed by his dad,” said someone who knew LeBron and Kyrie well when they were together on the Cavs. “It was ‘I gotta get this, I gotta get that,’ and then that led to who he is today.” When the Cavs were doing their background research on Irving, his relationship with his father came up time and again. Kyrie was close to Drederick, no question. But, the Cavs were told by their sources in New Jersey, Drederick could also be overly demanding of Kyrie, and unpredictable on such things as whether or not he might respond if someone spoke to him, or what he may insist from (or for) Kyrie. The Cavs were concerned about it enough to follow up with Irving’s coaches and friends at Duke. Irving forced a trade to Boston because he didn’t trust the Cavs to make him happy anymore. But as a Celtic, he apologized for the “flat Earth” comments, and also for how he resented and treated LeBron while they were teammates. Kyrie also began to exhibit some of the same behavior in Boston that the Cavs had heard about, and witnessed, from Drederick. The Celtics, as an organization, treated Irving precisely how he and his father thought he should be treated — like a star, with all the trimmings. But Irving’s teammates did not appreciate the way he tried to lead them. They felt they deserved more respect than they were getting. Irving was putting them in the same position he felt LeBron had put him in, in Cleveland. Like LeBron on the Cavs, Irving was the Celtic who had won a championship. The difference was the Celtics were already pretty good without Irving. “That probably changed a lot of players’ perspective,” one staff member from that Celtics team told me. Indeed, Irving’s trouble in Boston didn’t really begin until the second year, the season after the Celtics reached the Eastern Conference finals without him, because he was out following knee surgery. The team headed west for a long road trip the first week of March 2019, and Irving’s teammates boarded that plane worn out by his repeated swipes at them in the press after games, his sullenness at shootarounds and his open flirtation with leaving Boston as a free agent. They demanded change, and he was open to it. “Our vibes were pretty ****ed up at that point,” a Celtics official from that team told me. “Something definitely happened on that plane, where it’s like, ‘all right, let’s go.’ Kyrie was saying, ‘I want to be better.’ He wanted to kind of bust out of the bad vibes. Everyone did.” The good vibes lasted about two weeks. The Celtics ended March on another losing skid, and worse, Irving was back to his old ways. He didn’t trust his teammates enough to treat them as equals. “There were some days where he was very approachable, where he would talk to you, and other days it was not that way. His personality, his demeanor toward the organization was different,” a former Celtic told me. After the Celtics flamed out of the playoffs, and Irving picked Brooklyn as his destination in free agency, the Nets were well briefed on Irving’s reputation, hearing about it from their sources in Cleveland and Boston. They almost expected Irving to be a distraction at training camp and had discussed internally what to do if that came to fruition. But in the fall of 2019, the Kyrie Irving the Nets met was not the one they were concerned about meeting. He was everything they could hope for in a superstar, one who barreled as hard as he could toward the rim, at practice, regardless of who was standing in his way. He never missed a film session, and his comments during them were constructive. And through 20 games, he was off to the best start statistically of his career. Then Irving felt a pinch in his shoulder, and his Brooklyn honeymoon was effectively over. “It was something where Kyrie’s team mistrusts something with the medical team, and then it goes haywire,” I was told by a Nets official from that team. “It got weird when the injury came. That’s where it just became, you couldn’t put your thumb on him.” There it is again – a question of trust, this time between Irving and the Nets’ doctors. He sought second, and third, and fourth opinions, which is not uncommon in the NBA, but cutting team doctors out of the process is. He missed about two months while the team guessed when he might play again. He returned after deciding to take a cortisone shot, played for another month, and ultimately decided on surgery. Then, Irving tried to convince his colleagues not to trust the NBA’s attempt to restart play in the middle of the pandemic. He and others tried to upend the entire NBA Bubble at Disney, by urging players to refuse to participate because of (ironically) safety concerns related to the virus. Irving also felt it was inappropriate for the mostly African-American league to resume amidst great civil unrest in the country over police brutality toward Black people. But Irving wasn’t going to play at Disney anyway – he was still recovering from shoulder surgery. Almost nothing off the court has been easy with him since. As the incidents mounted, coaches and team members who used to work with him became concerned. “I remember his first time (playing us) with Boston, I walked onto the court and he was there and he gave me a hug,” one coach said. “That to me, that’s the kid I remember. The last few times, I haven’t had much interaction at all, like he looks right past me. No eye contact. I don’t take it personally, I don’t think it’s against me, I just think he is in his shell right now, and it’s sad.”
At least two people close to Irving who had been around the Nets since Kyrie signed with Brooklyn almost three summers ago are no longer there. One is Robin Pound, Irving’s longtime personal trainer and a former Marine, who sources say is no longer working with him. The other is Eli Carter, a childhood friend of Irving’s whom the Nets hired as a player-development coach but is no longer working for the Nets. In October, when it became clear Irving was willing to not play this season over his vaccination status, the Nets decided not to offer him the four-year, $187 million contract extension for which he was eligible. He has a player option worth $36.5 million on his current contract for next season, and if he declines it, then he could again be on the search for a new team. “I don’t think he’s radical, I really don’t,” one current Nets official told me, as we ran through the list of incidents involving Irving from the past five years. “I think his heart is really in the right place. He’s trying to do the right thing.” Irving can be generous with his resources. When he won Rookie of the Year in 2012, he gifted Pyonin the Kia that comes with the award. “It was in the papers, you can look it up,” Pyonin said, in the same Jewish center office where Irving once sat with him. More recently, in the aftermath of the George Floyd murder two summers ago, Irving bought Floyd’s family a house. Irving has been known to meet grieving families of fallen soldiers in the bowels of arenas before games, too. “Even when he’s ‘bad’ Kyrie, when he meets the family of a fallen soldier behind the scenes, in the underbelly of the arena, he is genuine and real and, like, hugs the mom,” said a league official who’s known Irving for years. “Right now, today, I believe he would take care of someone in that way.” Irving has certainly been generous to the people of Standing Rock – his people – in a couple of ways. There is a line item in the tribe’s annual budget for funds contributed by Irving. A few years ago, he donated more than $100,000 and specified that it be used for children’s programs – which is stipulated in the budget. He has sent food and thousands of masks during the pandemic. Through his father, he sent Char White Mountain two checks totaling $18,000 for an event she’d planned in his honor that he had to cancel, she said. And last fall, on the night Irving and his cousin dined at the casino, she told me he invited her to his SUV before he left and asked her to open her handbag. “He stuck something in my bag, but I didn’t want to look at it,” she said. “I didn’t know what to expect. But after he left, and we said our goodbyes and all that, I looked and it was just a big wad of money.” She declined to say how much cash Irving gave that night. As Char White Mountain told me her story, she said some of her family members – Kyrie’s family members – have tried to ask him for money. She said the wad of bills Irving gave her, he gave on his own, and she finds her family’s requests for help from Irving inappropriate. But as I drove the reservation, and met tribal and spiritual leaders who have met Irving, they also mentioned the White Mountain money requests. They said those requests came from Char. Who can he trust? Irving sought relationships on Standing Rock so he could get closer to the mother he lost so long ago. For years he has written her name on his shoes, had a Nike shoe made in her honor and has for years spoken openly about his grief. “He remembers her,” Char told me. “I said, ‘Do you really remember your mom?’ And he says, ‘Yes, I remember her.’ He just said he knew she loved him.” As Irving was missing games for refusing to take the vaccine, Char said she sent Kyrie a text message. “You have done so much for me, and there isn’t much I can do for you,” she told me she texted her cousin. But Char wanted to at least try to do something for Kyrie. Neither Char nor many in her family had received the COVID-19 vaccine, just like him, because she said “we don’t believe in it.” So she told Irving she was trying to get the Standing Rock tribal council to formally draft a letter of support for Irving, and maybe even mail it to the New York City mayor’s office. I asked her what Kyrie’s reaction was when she told him, and she said Irving told her he would be very grateful if she could do something like that. If Kyrie came to Standing Rock to feel closer to his mom, what he may have found is something else that maybe he feels is in short supply to him. Help.
Didn't read all of it but it just sounds like another coddled professional athlete that sulked and cried when he couldn't get his way.
Nice though I'd like to ask if you can point out some examples of his "much more complicated" life than what your average professional athlete has gone through in their respective lives. Over demanding parent that tries to micromanages you? Family members tugging at your heartstrings in order to milk as much money out of you as they can? Not knowing who to trust because you let your inner circle (e.g. your dad, your "team" that questioned the Nets medical staff when you had your shoulder injury) give you poor advice?
Ted could give ***** about Kyrie Irving lol. Look at this weasel using this situation for political gain. No sane Houston fan wants Kyrie on this team. Kyrie stay the hell away from Houston please.
Ted Cruz - Hilarity has ensued That said I'm gonna bet money the Mayor caves in . .. . .before the playoffs Rocket River
