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January 14, 2016In what is his first longform interview since returning to the floor this season, Kyrie Irving sat down with Yahoo! Sports/The Vertical’s Adrian Wojnarowski to discuss his childhood, his decision to head to duke, his injury, and his emotional journey back to the basketball court. A multi-time All-Star who has accomplished very much in a very short time, the most telling segment was when Irving discussed the immense transition from college to the NBA, playing for a team that desperately needed him to be a leader when he wasn’t ready to be one.
“Without a doubt. I always talk about how, after I’m done, I will tell numerous stories about what it’s really, really like to be 19 years old, the ‘franchise guy’—you basically come from eating free meals on a scholarship to getting paid a certain amount to play the game that you love, traveling from place to place, hotels to hotels, can’t even legally drink yet… There are so many things you have to deal with family wise, outside of the game… And then on top of that, you have to worry about playing against Russell Westbrook, Chris Paul, Stephen Curry, and go out and prove something to someone every single night. And that is a whirlwind to deal with. Now I can understand why certain things happen in the league where you wonder ‘What happened to that guy?’ It is a mental, strenuous occupation that I think only a few people can really understand. This is a crazy business and it can really consume you. It can swallow people up and spit them out.”
When Irving was drafted in 2011, he was forced to fill a void left by LeBron James who had left the summer before. The Cavaliers were one of the worst teams in the history of the league and were in dire need for a star to step back in and guide them to the playoffs. In 2014, as Irving was entering the last year of his contract, he admitted that he had not been a leader to that point. The team had yet to get back to the postseason, and would go on to have the first-overall pick in the draft two additional times.
Irving was very candid throughout the entire conversation, using terms like “lonely,” and described a night where he was in a gym at 3 a.m. in the midst of a losing streak, in tears, wondering what more he could do to help the Cavaliers win basketball games. He chastises himself for punching a wall during U.S.A. Basketball practice—”What are you doing, man?”—and speaks as a kid who’s learned a lifetime of lessons over his first five years in the league, culminating with his thoughts on Pepsi’s Uncle Drew campaign and his business ventures beyond the game of basketball.
“I wouldn’t change it for the world. I wouldn’t change the journey for the world. It’s still being written, but the way it happened, now it’s starting to make sense. Why I had to endure all that, and now we have all the pieces. I’m just sitting back and am like ‘man, this feels great—it feels great.’ You sit back, and it’s just about the game now. It’s not about what you’re trying to prove to anybody, it’s about winning now. It’s not about what this person is saying about you after the game or what your stats are going to look like because as a young player, stats really matter. When you have other pieces, the stats will come as winning comes. That’s when I was ‘This is what I want to be a part of.’ I can take sacrifices. I don’t have to be a 40-point scorer with 15 assists and 18 rebounds. You have a guy who can do that and I’m perfectly fine having a game where I get 17 points and four assists and five rebounds—and it ends with a “W”… Those types of games, I’m not sure they were possible in my first three or four years. Now it is because I have other pieces I can free flow with.”
The entire conversation is worthy of your time, but the discussions surrounding Irving’s first year in the league and how much he’s grown since then tip off around the 17-minute mark.
3 Comments
Kyrie Irving #NBAVote
Kyrie always comes across to me as extremely intelligent. A very underrated quality of his.
So glad he wasn’t traded like so many wanted. It’s amazing what he’s doing after being back 10 or 11 games. Clearly he’s still not at full speed which should be scary for opponents.