In November 2022, it looked like a legitimate possibility that Kyrie Irving would never play in the NBA again. In the wake of Irving’s tweets supporting a documentary that promoted Holocaust denial, Nike dropped him and canceled a Kyrie shoe that was about to come out, the Brooklyn Nets suspended him indefinitely, and Stephen A. Smith flat out said he should retire. This was not a decade ago; this was 16 months ago.
With Kyrie Irving and his Dallas Mavericks a game away from making the NBA Finals, it’s an opportune time to unpack just how much has changed for Irving, and for the rest of us, in those 16 months. Irving has gone from the most despised, toxic player in the NBA — Shaquille O’Neal called him an “idiot,” and Reggie Miller compared him to Donald Sterling — within shouting distance of his second championship. And it happened so fast. How?
On a fundamental level, it helps that Irving remains fantastic at basketball. He has taken on less of a scoring burden with the Mavericks than he bore with the Nets, playing second fiddle to superstar Luka Doncic in a not-dissimilar way he did to LeBron James back in Cleveland. This incredible Mavericks run would have been impossible without him. He has made smart decisions, he has played better defense than we have seen from him in years, and he has chosen the exact right moments to unleash his otherworldly offensive game. In other words, he has been everything the Mavericks could have possibly hoped when they made their hotly debated trade for him last year. Perhaps more surprisingly, he has also been a model citizen since showing up in Dallas (and signing a new three-year, $120 million contract), causing no more dustups and staying out of any controversy. (He hasn’t posted on Instagram in more than two years.) Irving has, at last, let his basketball speak for itself.
For now, anyway. It has only been 16 months, after all. And it is worth pointing out that, shortly after the Mavericks traded for him, Irving deleted the apology he made to the Jewish community back when he was suspended. (He claimed the deletion was just him “living his life.”) And while I think Irving’s exemplary play and active attempts to leave a lower social-media profile have been the central reasons for his turnaround, I think we’ve changed, too. I think people are inviting Irving back for the same reason they’ve invited so many others back to the public stage: We’re exhausted. We no longer have the outrage left in us to fight.
Remember, Irving’s antisemitic posts did not come out of nowhere. For a lot of people, they were the final straw. In previous years, Irving, described by one NBA player as a “contrarian without a cause,” had (deep breath):
• Argued that the earth was flat, and that JFK was killed because he wanted to end the banking cartel.
• Claimed on Instagram that “secret societies are administering vaccines in a plot to connect Black people to a master computer for a plan of Satan.”
• Pointed his social-media followers to an Alex Jones rant about the government intentionally releasing viruses on the public.
• Attempted to shut down the NBA bubble from the outside. (You can at least see where he was coming from on this one.)
• Single-handedly dismantled a burgeoning (and very expensive) Brooklyn Nets semi-dynasty by refusing to get a COVID-19 vaccine, leading to a situation where he could only play road games and setting off a series of events that resulted in Kevin Durant and James Harden (and eventually himself) being shipped out of town.
By the time Irving linked to the antisemitic video, people had had enough of him. He simply looked like a guy who had lost his mind. But he refused to go away. He leveraged the trade to the Mavericks. Then he got his contract, ensuring that, if he kept his mouth shut and avoided any more suspensions, he wouldn’t be going anywhere. And then he just kept going.
And he wore us down. We live in an age in which we need constant fuel for our outrage, new fuel, fresh fuel, and the Irving controversies were so relentless that we stopped being able to pay attention to them anymore; after the constant debates we all had about him, we couldn’t help but roll your eyes upon hearing his name. So we stopped. His past outrages were replaced by new ones, and, in a new city with a new team (and no longer any vaccine mandates), others stepped in to fill the void. It also should not go without notice that, well, the discourse involving what is and what isn’t antisemitic has, disturbingly, also changed in the 16 months since Kyrie was suspended. Would there be the same backlash if he were to link to that documentary again today? Or would we just point to the endless number of things people say every day — former political allies, even — that may be far worse?
And that’s where Kyrie finds himself now, 16 months later: not apologizing (in fact, deleting previous apologies) but playing nice. And knowing that in the end — other than that terminated Nike contract that could come back into play at any point — there really weren’t any major consequences to any of his actions. Irving is back on the verge of leading a team to the NBA Finals, playing against a fan base that hates him for entirely different reasons than the ones I’ve mentioned. He’s got a huge contract and is on the verge of what would probably be the biggest professional success of his career. He played through it all and has ended up just fine. There’s a lesson here — for Aaron Rodgers, for any athlete or public figure who reaches a point they seemingly can’t come back from. It’s a lesson Donald Trump learned a long time ago: Just keep going. You can outlast the outrage. There is, after all, so much else to be outraged about. And there will always be more to come.
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