Dallas Mavericks guard Kyrie Irving, left, and guard A.J. Lawson laugh with teammates during the NBA Finals Media Day at TD Garden in Boston on June 5.Peter Casey/Reuters
Ahead of the start of the NBA Finals, LeBron James has been doing the rounds. His basketball career is winding down so now that he has more time off in the spring, he’s casting about for new roles.
One of them is retrospectivist. A good way to assert your dominance over an era is to presume to pronounce on it. Who was who and what was what. James is there now.
During an interview on the podcast Mind the Game, James gave his verdict on former teammate and current Dallas Mavericks star Kyrie Irving: “the most gifted player the NBA has ever seen.”
That sounds like a compliment, and it is, sort of.
There is no world in which James thinks Irving is either better or more gifted than he is (and he’s right). With that in mind, it’s hard not to read this as James suggesting Irving has thrived despite himself. It’s the gifts that win, not the man.
Whatever it is, no player in any modern game has better proved the redemptive power of sport. Whether you are a supporter of that redemption is a different conversation.
The story the NBA would like to tell about this year’s Finals is Boston’s Jayson Tatum vs. Dallas’s Luka Doncic. Two cookie-cutter modern stars, neither of whom has ever offended a paying customer. Tatum is the smouldering one. Doncic is the goofy one. They’d make a decent buddy pair in a movie about gigantic men who become undercover detectives.
Irving, 32, is the player people who work in the business of basketball would prefer to tuck behind Doncic or a pole or anything, really. Any time you get Irving behind a mic – if you can do that – it’s a cancel-all-PR-leaves situation.
Irving was a flat-earther before it was cool. Like a lot of pro athletes, he refused to get the COVID vaccine. Unlike a lot of those athletes, he wanted to talk about it. He’s a conspiracy theory super fan, pushing stuff from Alex Jones and promoting a documentary accused of being antisemitic.
That last move brought the sharp end of the NBA hierarchy down on top of him. Irving admitted fault, but refused to apologize. It’s a very American combo.
NBA commissioner Adam Silver met with him – code for offered him a chance to retreat with honour – but Irving refused again. His team, the Brooklyn Nets, suspended him. Irving remained immovable.
If Irving had been a backup point guard, he would by this point have been running a string of car washes. But because of those gifts, the NBA was willing to put up with just about anything he had to say.
Irving never did apologize. The solution was a change of scenery. The Nets traded him to Dallas for a package of prospects.
At the time, the move was advertised as a disaster for Irving personally and the Mavericks institutionally. Plenty of teams have an albatross. Few go albatross shopping. In retribution for Irving’s sins, Dallas would sink, pulling down Doncic with it.
In the 2022-23 season, mob justice prevailed. Irving arrived in February and the team got worse. It missed the playoffs.
In 2023-24, that storyline continued. Dallas was good, but middlingly so. Nobody rated its roster of shooters from distance and little else.
The Mavericks were supposed to lose in the first round against the L.A. Clippers. They didn’t. They were really supposed to lose against everyone’s second-favourite team, the Oklahoma City Thunder. They did not.
By the time the Mavericks hit the Minnesota Timberwolves, the worm was turning. Dallas was going from the casual fan’s favourite meme dartboard to a team of destiny. Outside shooting? Who knew?
Led by Doncic and Irving, Dallas flattened Minnesota in three games, then spent a couple more scraping it off the parquet.
Now we’ve got LeBron James out there hailing Irving as the George Best or Shoeless Joe Jackson of basketball. The guy who has it all, but could have had even more. Irving has done the bare minimum to advance the theory that he’s a changed man, but that’s all it takes.
After making the Finals, he discussed another one of his fractious job postings, in Boston. He was full of excuses (“a little bit more grace could have been extended my way”), but also gave everyone the headline they were looking for: “I wasn’t my best self during that time.”
“He’s really, really showing us the power of discovering inner peace,” America’s sports conscience, Stephen A. Smith, said afterward.
No, that’s not what he’s doing. What Irving is demonstrating is the obstructive capacity of success. Winning erects a wall between right now and whatever you did in the past. Winning creates a new you.
If Irving had come out and said the same thing after losing in the first round, people would have laughed at him. But saying it before a final series puts him in the position of the forgiver. The only thing the crowd likes better than being apologized to is being forgiven.
This is sport’s real redemption arc. It can take someone everyone jeered a year ago and turn him into a Buddha-like figure who’s accessed inner peace. All by winning a few playoff rounds.
No one has ever lawyered, accountanted or constuctioned their way to a higher plane. You can only play yourself there. It makes you wish you’d tried harder in gym class.
There are two possibilities for this year’s Finals. Dallas wins, and Irving continues his ascent toward secular sporting beatification. Or Boston wins, and everyone ditches the ‘Kyrie’s changed’ storyline for the next shiny thing.
All Irving has to do to keep things on track is win rather than talk, and never, ever post. History would suggest that his gifts do not extend that far.