Stephen A. Smith, Kyrie Irving, and a truly dumb afternoon of sports talk

Isn’t it interesting how nearly everyone dismisses ESPN’s First Take until they don’t? I mean, I don’t know anyone who implicitly trusts everything (anything?) they hear discussed on First Take, yet when Stephen A. Smith talks about things he’s heard regarding Kyrie Irving’s unhappiness, all of a sudden a portion of Cleveland Cavaliers fans on Twitter take it to heart?

You should see Kyrie Irving’s Twitter mentions right about now. I won’t copy and paste them here because they’re not important. Just know that people are @-ing Kyrie and saying lots of things about where he can go if he’s not happy in Cleveland. And for what? Is this because the Cavaliers lost a bad one against the Washington Wizards and Stephen A. Smith spouted off? If we must get into this, then in the name of raising the bar in terms of discourse, let’s do it.

Speaking of raising the bar, let’s look at what Stephen A. Smith had to say on First Take.

Dating back to last year, I’ve been told that Kyrie Irving ain’t too happy being in Cleveland. The situation is not ideal for him. I don’t know the particulars, I haven’t spoken to him personally. It’s something that I’ve been hearing for months; that under ideal circumstances he would prefer to be someplace other than Cleveland.

Let me say for the record here right now that under ideal circumstances I would prefer to live in either San Diego or Charleston, South Carolina. I love Cleveland. I was born and raised here in the eastern suburbs of this city. My whole family is here, and yet, under ideal circumstances, I would prefer to be someplace other than Cleveland. Now, to be perfectly honest, that’s just my perception of the world. I might not enjoy living in either of those places, despite thinking that in some other ideal circumstance that it would be preferable to me. All this is to say that Stephen A. Smith really didn’t say much of anything except what he doesn’t know.

Stephen A. Smith hasn’t spoken to Kyrie personally and he doesn’t know the particulars. And yet, even as Stephen A. Smith says that directly, many Cavs fans flew off the handle sending missives at Kyrie Irving on Twitter.

We all know that Twitter isn’t real life. I am keeping the social media network in perspective when I write about it here. Some fraction of Cavs fans losing their excrement and flexing their Internet muscles doesn’t mean a whole lot more than Stephen A. Smith spouting second-hand information when he doesn’t know the particulars after the Cavs lost an ugly one with LeBron James taking some rest on the bench.

It’s still important to point out how dumb it is to tweet things like that at your favorite athletes. There’s no upside whatsoever to saying negative things to guys who play for your team. Even in some imaginary scenario where Kyrie Irving said, “under ideal circumstances I would prefer to be someplace other than Cleveland,” it isn’t like you could make things any better by tweeting bile back to him. It’s like the old Henny Youngman joke about the guy who goes to the doctor and says, “It hurts when I move my arm like this.” The doctor looks at him and tells him “don’t move your arm like that.”

And at the end of it all, consider the source. Stephen A. Smith is connected and he does hear things, but this could be outdated information. It’s kind of interesting timing that it’s showing up so conveniently when the Cavaliers lost an embarrassing game to Washington. It’s also vague enough that it kind of doesn’t really mean anything. And yet, this largely meaningless information has now become the catalyst for Cavs fans to grind their teeth down and attempt to burn a bridge with a young star athlete that’s still getting better as a player and is under contract until the end of the 2019-20 season.

It doesn’t make any sense and you know it. But take a Cavaliers team that’s as high profile as any Cavaliers team ever, combine it with ESPN’s First Take and the advent of Twitter, and we find ourselves in a really dumb afternoon of sports talk.